Women of Quality: Accepting and Contesting Ideals of Femininity in England, 1690-1760 (Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History, 1) 0851159079, 9780851159072

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
NOTE ON THE TEXT
INTRODUCTION
1. Ideals of Femininity
Seventeenth-century conduct books
Modesty, chastity, and feminine conduct in the early eighteenth century
Marriage
Praise of femininity
Conclusion
2. The Attack on Fashionable Society
Fashionable dress
Fashionable diversions
Femininity and consumption
Conclusion
3. Marriage
Marrying well
Living the ideal?
Marital breakdown
Conclusion
4. Household Management
“Women of business”
Good credit: domestic economy and financial restraint
Mistress and servant
Estate management and hands-on labor
Conclusion
5. Consumption and Fashion
Appropriate consumption
Rejecting fashionable consumption
Conclusion
6. Politeness and Sociability
A polite education
Sociability and reputation
The politics of politeness
Sincerity and sentiment
Conclusion
7. Public Life, Influence, and Politics
Christianity and charity
Influence at court
Influence and politics beyond the court
Influence and femininity
Conclusion
CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

Citation preview

WOMEN OF QUALITY: ACCEPTING AND CONTESTING IDEALS OF FEMININITY IN ENGLAND, 1690–1760

Ingrid H. Tague

THE BOYDELL PRESS

WOMEN OF QUALITY

Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History SERIES EDITORS David Armitage Tim Harris Stephen Taylor

WOMEN OF QUALITY ACCEPTING AND CONTESTING IDEALS OF FEMININITY IN ENGLAND, 1690–1760

Ingrid H. Tague

THE BOYDELL PRESS

Disclaimer: Some images in the original version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook.

© Ingrid H. Tague 2002 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2002 Published by The Boydell Press An imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604–4126, USA website: www.boydell.co.uk ISBN 0 85115 907 9 ISSN 1476–9107 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tague, Ingrid, 1968– Women of quality: accepting and contesting ideals of femininity in England, 1690–1760/Ingrid Tague. p. cm. – (Studies in early modern cultural, political and social history, ISSN 1476–9107; v. 1) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–85115–907–9 (alk. paper) 1. Women – England – Social conditions – 18th century. 2. Women – England – Social life and customs – 18th century. 3. Femininity – England – History – 18th century. I. Title. II. Series. HQ1599.E5 T34 2002 305.42′0942–dc21 2002074516

Typeset by Keystroke, Jacaranda Lodge, Wolverhampton Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

Contents List of figures Acknowledgements Note on the text

vii viii ix

Introduction

1

1

Ideals of Femininity Seventeenth-century conduct books Modesty, chastity, and feminine conduct in the early eighteenth century Marriage Praise of femininity Conclusion

18 24 30 35 44 47

2

The Attack on Fashionable Society Fashionable dress Fashionable diversions Femininity and consumption Conclusion

49 50 55 67 69

3

Marriage Marrying well Living the ideal? Marital breakdown Conclusion

72 73 76 86 95

4

Household Management “Women of business” Good credit: domestic economy and financial restraint Mistress and servant Estate management and hands-on labor Conclusion

97 99 106 111 123 131

5

Consumption and Fashion Appropriate consumption Rejecting fashionable consumption Conclusion

133 140 153 160

v

CONTENTS

6

Politeness and Sociability A polite education Sociability and reputation The politics of politeness Sincerity and sentiment Conclusion

162 167 175 182 189 193

7

Public Life, Influence, and Politics Christianity and charity Influence at court Influence and politics beyond the court Influence and femininity Conclusion

194 198 201 208 213 217

Conclusion Bibliography Index

218 224 246

vi

Figures 1 2 3 4 5

L. P. Boitard, The Imports of Great Britain from France The Tea-Table Gawen Hamilton, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, and his Family (1732) Henrietta, Countess of Suffolk Henrietta St. John, Lady Luxborugh

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54 64 79 91 157

Acknowledgements This project began nearly a decade ago, long enough for me to acquire far greater intellectual debts than I can adequately acknowledge or repay. Tim Harris, who directed the dissertation from which the book emerged, has provided encouragement and constructive criticism since its inception. I am also particularly grateful to Philip Benedict, Helen Berry, Perry Curtis, Konstantin Dierks, Anthony Fletcher, Anne Kugler, Jessica Munns, Jan Thaddeus, Amanda Vickery, Dror Wahrman, and Rachel Weil, for their comments and suggestions at various stages of the project. The staff at Penrose Library in the University of Denver, the Newberry Library, the British Library, and local record offices have been invariably helpful and courteous. I owe an extra debt to Peggy Keeran of Penrose Library for her assistance in setting up access to online sources. My friends and colleagues in DU’s History Department have been a constant source of encouragement and help, as well as providing an impressive model of scholarly achievement for me to emulate. Brown University provided funding for research in the UK; the University of Denver granted me additional research funds and a minisabbatical. Parts of Chapters 1 and 3 were originally published as “Love, Honor, and Obedience: Fashionable Women and the Discourse of Marriage in the Early Eighteenth Century,” Journal of British Studies 40 (January 2001): 76–106 (copyright The North American Conference on British Studies). Joanna Drell, Todd Galitz, Ulle Holt, Dave Jones, Melissa Lee, Emily O’Brien, Susannah Ottaway, John Richards, and Mike Rohrs have, for a very long time, shared friendship, places to stay, and advice about work and many other things that were far more important. I hope they know how grateful I am. For far too many years, members of my family have listened to me talk about my research, yet they continue to feign interest with remarkable success. Peter, Cheryl, and William Tague also provided luxurious accommodations and lots of chocolate croissants during my last trip to London. My parents, Annemarie and Berkley Tague, have been a constant source of encouragement, enthusiasm, and sympathy; they have read a great deal of this book in one form or another and heard about much, much more. Paul Dewen has read none of it, yet it could not have been written without him. He showed infinite patience with its often distracted, anxious, and downright cranky author. It seemed fitting, somehow, that I signed a book contract and a marriage license in the same week – though I hope the latter marked the beginning of a much longer project.

viii

Note on the text Dates before the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar in 1752 are given in the Old Style, except that the year is taken to begin on 1 January. In the notes, dates are given as they appear in the original source. When the source gives only the Old Style year for dates between 1 January and 24 March, the new year is given as well, in brackets. Common early modern contractions (such as “ye” for “the”) have been expanded, and minor changes needed for clarity have been made silently; otherwise, the spelling and punctuation are left in their original form. Published editions exist of several of the major manuscript collections used here. These include the Wentworth papers, the Hatton papers, Lady Mary Cowper’s diary, and Henrietta Howard’s correspondence.1 The reliability of these editions varies considerably, even within a given publication, and each includes only part of the original collection. For these reasons, I refer throughout to the original manuscripts. Dealing with the aristocracy always poses a problem for the historian and reader, who must cope with frequently changing titles; these problems are multiplied when dealing with women. I have chosen to refer to individuals by whatever titles they were using at any given moment, but I try to provide enough information in the text or footnotes for the reader to keep track of the prominent figures in this study.

1

James J. Cartwright, ed., The Wentworth Papers 1705–1739 (London: Wyman & Sons, 1883). Edward Maunde Thompson, ed., Correspondence of the Family of Hatton Being Chiefly Letters Addressed to Christopher First Viscount Hatton A.D. 1601–1704, 2 vols. (London: Camden Society, 1878). Mary Clavering Cowper, Diary of Mary Countess Cowper, Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess of Wales. 1714–1720 (London: John Murray, 1864). J. W. Croker, ed., Letters to and from Henrietta, Countess of Suffolk, and her Second Husband, the Hon. George Berkeley; from 1712 to 1767, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1824). Lewis Melville, Lady Suffolk and her Circle (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1924).

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Introduction [S]he considers her Husband as her Steward, and looks upon Discretion, and good House-Wifery, as little domestick Virtues, unbecoming a Woman of Quality. She thinks Life lost in her own Family, and fancies her self out of the World when she is not in the Ring, the Play-House, or the Drawing-Room: She lives in a perpetual Motion of Body, and Restlessness of Thought, and is never easie in any one Place when she thinks there is more Company in another. The missing of an Opera the first Night, would be more afflicting to her than the Death of a Child. She pities all the valuable Part of her own Sex, and calls every Woman of a prudent modest retired Life, a poor-spirited, unpolished Creature. What a Mortification would it be to Fulvia, if she knew that her setting her-self to View is but exposing her self, and that she grows Contemptible by being Conspicuous.1

With this verbal portrait of “Fulvia,” first published in March 1711, Joseph Addison described the woman that didactic authors of the early eighteenth century most hated and feared: the woman of fashion. In his scathing portrayal, Fulvia overturns all the rules that were supposed to govern women’s lives. Rather than obeying her husband, she treats him as her servant. Rather than caring for her family, she is bored at home and has so little feeling for her children that their death would cause her less grief than missing opening night at the opera. She ignores her domestic responsibilities on the grounds that her rank as a “Woman of Quality” excuses her from such tasks. And how does she spend her time, if not in caring for household and family? She follows an endless round of diversions, of visits to public places, plays, and court – and she is happiest wherever there are the most people. Her notion of politeness is determined by those fashionable activities, while she looks down on any woman who does not imitate her life of ceaseless frivolities. Addison’s comment at the end of this passage that Fulvia’s behavior is “Contemptible” is superfluous; his contempt is visible in every word. But his goal of making his readers – male and female – see her as contemptible was central to the agenda of the Spectator and that of many other social critics, who saw themselves as embattled representatives of true feminine virtues. For such writers, the diversions that occupied Fulvia were engrossing the lives of far too many women, and were growing at an alarming rate. Addison and authors like him sought to reassert what they saw as women’s proper role, a

1

Joseph Addison, Spectator 15 (17 March 1711), in Donald F. Bond, ed., The Spectator, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 1: 68–9. 1

WOMEN OF QUALITY

“prudent modest retired Life” of domestic love and responsibility. In the place of contemptible chaos, they offered respect, order, and esteem to the women who obeyed their dictates. The strict division Addison creates, between those women who follow the principles of feminine duty and those who choose to spend their time in idleness and company, was re-created again and again in the didactic literature for women that circulated widely during the eighteenth century. * * * My Dearest life and Soul makes me so great a compliment in wonce bringing me in Competion [sic] with your Publick Afairs that I dont know what to say for my Self. . . . I am to day to goe to A very od figure of A Lady that’s Lord Treasurer’s who is like an Old house Keeper but I hear Lord Treasurer takes it as A compliment paid to him for she seldom goes a brode so I am content’d to do it in hopes it may be of Service to you. I last week met the Duchess of Marlborough & the Duchess of Mountague in a viset and they both looked upon me with the most Spleen & mallis I ever see peaple [in]. I own I think they may envy me but I envy no body. For as you & I love won anothere all thing’s elce in this world are but Triffles. . . . I own I like Sister Betty’s humour very well if she did not let Sister Arundell Govern so intirly. I carry her Abrod with me very often & wou’d more if she was not ingaged before to her Sister. I can’t but say I think my carring [sic] her into good Company might be of advantage to her & make her Gentell which indeed at present she is not . . . as for Scandall the Town has now A great Deal at Lady Mary Gores cost tho som say’s she desarve’s more then is said of her. At the Bath there was A perticaler set of company six men & six wemen that mett two or three times A week to Dance & won night all the Candle’s was blown out & the men was very rude upon which Mr Gore desired her to goe no more into that Company but she told him she would & if Citizens pretend’d to marry Quality they must take it for there pain’s.2

When Anne, Countess of Strafford, wrote this letter to her husband in December 1711, they had been married for about three months. He had already returned to his diplomatic post in The Hague, and she was doing her best to convince him that she would make him a good wife. The letter is apparently trivial, dealing with family and social gossip, describing her visits and her relations with her new in-laws. Yet the document works on a number of levels to show her negotiating her various roles as wife, family member, and participant in elite society and politics. She begins by calling Lord Strafford her “dearest life and soul” (her usual salutation) and expressing her gratitude that he would even consider putting her above his “public affairs.” Here she presents herself as the ideal, submissive wife, deeply in love with her husband

2 Countess of Strafford to Earl of Strafford, St. James’s Square, 5 December 1711, BL Add. MS 22226, fols. 39r–40r.

2

INTRODUCTION

but remaining quietly in her domestic sphere while he conducts his more important public business. She returns to this sentiment later in the letter when she insists that as long as they love each other all other worldly affairs “are but Triffles.” She also describes two visits, when she saw Lord Treasurer Oxford’s old servant and encountered the wrath of the Duchess of Marlborough and her daughter, the Duchess of Montagu. Visiting consumed a large proportion of time for elite women like Lady Strafford, but this was not simply a case of a leisured woman engaging in idle sociability. Lord Oxford was an important Tory ally of Lord Strafford, and Lady Strafford explicitly describes her visit to the ex-servant as an attempt to reinforce that political connection, to help her husband’s public affairs. The unpleasant reactions of the Duchess of Marlborough and her daughter, in turn, are explicable in light of the current Tory domination of politics and Tory attacks on the Duke of Marlborough.3 Despite Lady Strafford’s rhetorical shift to the emotional language of love, both these visits were deeply politically charged. After describing her visits, Lady Strafford turns to family matters, discussing two of Lord Strafford’s sisters, Isabella Arundell and Betty Wentworth. Betty was his youngest, and only unmarried, sister. Lady Strafford is careful to spend as much time as possible with Betty, she writes, in order to make her more genteel; engaging in sociability had an educational function as well as political and personal goals, since good company had a reforming power. Lady Strafford contrasts her own, positive influence on Betty with Mrs. Arundell’s. She claims responsibility for training Betty in the polite behavior that will make her more attractive on the marriage market and shore up the Wentworth family’s status. Just as Lady Strafford understands the public, political significance of her own patterns of sociability, so she recognizes the importance of an education in sociable interaction. Without such knowledge, Betty will be unable to demonstrate ease in the polite rituals that are crucial to the lives of elite women. Finally, Lady Strafford fills her husband in on the latest “Scandall” of the town, a story of wifely insubordination and sexual misconduct. Lady Mary Gore not only exposed herself to the advances of other men, but defied her husband when he asked her to stop. Moreover, she used her higher rank as an excuse to ignore his orders. Lady Strafford clearly relishes the details of the story, and such gossip, or “chit-chat,” was a common object of attack by didactic writers, who saw it as a result of women’s fashionable idleness. Yet Lady Strafford’s audience is not other women but her own husband. And she employs the story, like the other information in the letter, to create a favorable contrast with her own marriage. This letter, with its seemingly innocuous details of visiting, family tensions, and society gossip, opens a window to many of the roles played by

3 See Frances Harris, A Passion for Government: The Life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 186–8.

3

WOMEN OF QUALITY

aristocratic women. The topics discussed here, including the political and status implications of sociability, and the variations and conflicts in family connections, will form some of the major themes of the chapters that follow. The personal writings of women like Lady Strafford enable us to view the ways in which they constructed their identities for a variety of audiences, including not only their husbands but also other family members and friends. The significance of these letters lies in their details and in their language, not simply in the behavior they describe. * * * Addison’s didactic essay and Lady Strafford’s letter were produced just months apart, and they deal with similar issues. Both address women’s involvement in various forms of sociable activities, Addison through his description of Fulvia’s pastimes and Lady Strafford in her discussion of her own behavior. Addison’s Fulvia places enormous value on participating in these activities, and so does Lady Strafford. But their agendas are obviously widely divergent. While Addison condemns Fulvia, Lady Strafford discusses her fashionable socializing with pride, and stresses her role in helping her sister-in-law attain a similar level of gentility. Simply to stop here, however, and argue that Lady Strafford shares none of Addison’s ideals, would be a mistake. We know that Lady Strafford read and enjoyed the Spectator.4 Moreover, even in this letter we can see that she shares some of Addison’s values; she insists, for instance, on her love for and submission to her husband. And, like Addison, she condemns a woman who uses her status as a member of the “Quality” to justify bad behavior. Putting Lady Strafford’s account of her activities next to Addison’s essay enables us to see the connections as well as the disjunctions between established gender norms and actual female behavior. This book is based on the two major types of sources represented by Addison’s essay and Lady Strafford’s letter: didactic literature and women’s personal writing. By juxtaposing the changing discourse of feminine ideals against elite women’s own descriptions of their behavior, this study reveals the complex interactions of status and gender in early modern English society. Aristocratic women’s self-presentations in letters and diaries demonstrate the importance of social rank in enabling them to overcome the restrictions of their sex, but they also reveal the continuing power of those restrictions even for elite women. An understanding of the ways in which they constructed their feminine identity similarly militates against simplistic conclusions about the force (or lack thereof) of “separate spheres” ideology. Many aristocratic women recognized the public implications of their activities. At the same time, they frequently discussed even their most public

4

See Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 21 December 1711, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 47. 4

INTRODUCTION

roles in terms of their adherence to feminine ideals of submissiveness and passivity. Withdrawing from participation in fashionable society in favor of feminine domesticity, furthermore, functioned paradoxically as a public way of asserting virtue. And in significant ways gender ideologies helped cement the aristocracy’s hold on power in the early eighteenth century. Precisely because women’s activities were supposed to be trivial and private, they could engage in the informal networks of alliance and obligation that were crucial to elite dominance. Ironically, assumptions about gender roles helped to put aristocratic women at the very center of English public life. Much scholarship on gender and the eighteenth century has focused on the creation of separate spheres for men and women. This concept has dominated, in particular, the work of literary scholars studying the origins of the novel, the growth of periodicals for women, and, from a different angle, the rise of the professional woman writer. According to the usual argument, the eighteenth century saw the formation of a rigid division between public and private (or domestic) spheres along gender lines, a division that would become entrenched by the nineteenth century. The argument about the rise of separate spheres is usually accompanied by the implicit or explicit assumption that such a gender division is by definition “bourgeois”: scholars who emphasize separate spheres thus often present a parallel trajectory of the rise of the middle class. This model has proved particularly fruitful for literary scholars such as Nancy Armstrong and Kathryn Shevelow, who create subtle readings of the effects – positive as well as negative – of the connections created in the eighteenth century between the middle class, women, and new literary forms.5 This tendency to read backward from the nineteenth century has its limitations, however. The usefulness of the concept of separate spheres has come under increasing question in recent years. Some studies of individual families or groups have suggested that there was a large distinction between ideology and practice, and that ideas about separate spheres were largely irrelevant to women’s experiences.6 On another level, several recent scholars have drawn attention to the theoretical flaws inherent in much scholarship

5

Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Kathryn Shevelow, Women and Print Culture: The Construction of Femininity in the Early Periodical (London: Routledge, 1989); Ros Ballaster et al., Women’s Worlds: Ideology, Femininity and the Woman’s Magazine (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), ch. 2. More recently, Shawn Lisa Maurer, Proposing Men: Dialectics of Gender and Class in the Eighteenth-Century English Periodical (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), explores bourgeois masculinity in the period. 6 For this argument regarding the sixteenth, seventeenth and nineteenth centuries respectively, see Alison Wall, “Elizabethan Precept and Feminine Practice: The Thynne Family of Longleat,” History 75 (1990): 23–38; Vivienne Larminie, Wealth, Kinship and Culture: The Seventeenth-Century Newdigates of Arbury and Their World (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Royal Historical Society/Boydell Press, 1995); M. Jeanne Peterson, Family, Love 5

WOMEN OF QUALITY

that depends on this gendered division. They point out that the frequent conflation of the masculine public sphere and Jürgen Habermas’s “bourgeois public sphere” has obscured the very real differences between these two concepts, and they emphasize the multitude of meanings carried by the terms “public” and “private” in the early modern period. What was “public” or “private” depended on specific context; there was no necessary correlation between “private” and “feminine.”7 This book uses some of the sources that have been central to both traditional literary and historical scholarship, in order to study the significance of gender and the notion of gendered spheres in the decades following the Glorious Revolution. Although it is informed by the recent criticisms of the idea of separate spheres, it argues that the early eighteenth century did see an increasingly strident attempt on the part of cultural theorists generally and didactic writers in particular to create a strict division between public and private realms along gender lines, and to confine women entirely to domestic affairs. It also argues that this division had a real effect on women’s interpretation of their own experiences and of the behavior of others. But this distinction was not simply a “middle-class” phenomenon. Rather, the idea of a distinction between masculine and feminine realms strongly influenced many women from the highest ranks of English society. Yet they did not mindlessly absorb the values expressed by the Spectator and other didactic literature. This book argues for a subtler interpretation that resists replicating the separate spheres dichotomy in an equally strict dichotomy between ideology and practice. It looks instead at the ways in which women could ignore, accept, or even exploit ideals of feminine behavior depending on their particular circumstances, often in ways quite different from the intentions of the theorists who propagated those ideals. To say this is not to imply that women were cynical manipulators; it is to suggest that the cluster

and Work in the Lives of Victorian Gentlewomen (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989); M. Jeanne Peterson, “No Angels in the House: The Victorian Myth and the Paget Women,” American Historical Review 89 (1984): 677–708. An explicit rejection of the principle of “separate spheres” underlies Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). 7 Lawrence E. Klein, “Gender and the Public/Private Distinction in the Eighteenth Century: Some Questions About Evidence and Analytic Procedure,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 29 (1995): 97–109; John Brewer, “This, That and the Other: Public, Social and Private in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Shifting the Boundaries: Transformation of the Languages of Public and Private in the Eighteenth Century, ed. D. Castiglione and L. Sharpe (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1995), pp. 1–21; Amanda Vickery, “Golden Age to Separate Spheres? A Review of the Categories and Chronology of English Women’s History,” Historical Journal 36 (1993): 383–414; Dena Goodman, “Public Sphere and Private Life: Toward a Synthesis of Current Historiographical Approaches to the Old Regime,” History and Theory 31 (1992): 1–20. Vickery restates many of her arguments against separate spheres in Gentleman’s Daughter, pp. 1–12. 6

INTRODUCTION

of ideas about proper feminine behavior created a discourse with an explanatory force. Individuals often act first and seek to justify their behavior later, using the explanatory tools available to them. For many women in the early eighteenth century, the discourse of femininity provided such an explanatory tool. In this view, the ideology of femininity created during this period had complex effects that resist reduction to a simple theory/practice distinction. Despite the recent interest in eighteenth-century women’s and gender history, the first half of the century remains comparatively neglected.8 Yet there are good reasons for focusing on this period. The decades following the Glorious Revolution saw enormous social, cultural, and political change, which had important ramifications for ideas about women. The intense anxiety about gender norms found in conduct literature for women can be seen as the result of these changes. The specific impact of the Revolution – today associated above all with the ideas of John Locke and contract theories of government – on gender relations has been the subject of considerable debate.9 The implications of contract theory for gender relations were great in a society that had long relied on analogies between state and family. What did the rise of this political theory suggest about that other important contract, the marriage contract? Some feminist scholars have argued that the Revolution created at least the possibility of a more equitable view of marriage.10 Others have seen contract theory as replacing one type of patriarchy with another. Rather than improving gender relations, such arguments go, contract theory created a strict public–private divide, defining the family as private and confining women to private life, while privileging the public sphere.11 Most recently, Rachel Weil has suggested a much more complex picture of the effects of the Revolution, reminding us that we must pay attention to the specific circumstances in which ideas about gender were employed during political debates. Instead of seeing Revolution principles as purely beneficial or damaging to

8 Many works that ostensibly discuss women throughout the eighteenth century or Georgian period actually focus on its later decades. See, most recently, Vickery, Gentleman’s Daughter. 9 See the Introduction to Rachel Weil, Political Passions: Gender, the Family and Political Argument in England, 1680–1714 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), for a useful summary of recent scholarship on the relationship between politics and gender during and after the Glorious Revolution. John Spurr, England in the 1670s: “This Masquerading Age” (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), ch. 7, investigates the politics of gender in earlier years. 10 Margaret R. Sommerville, Sex and Subjection: Attitudes to Women in Early-Modern Society (New York: Arnold, 1995), pp. 215–17; Mary Lyndon Shanley, “Marriage Contract and Social Contract in Seventeenth Century English Political Thought,” Western Political Quarterly 32 (1979): 79–91. 11 Most influential is Carol Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988).

7

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women, she argues, we should consider the new conflicts, challenges, and questions created in this period and the wide variety of implications they held. Nonetheless, her work persuasively argues for the centrality of gender in these political debates – for example, in the frequent attempts by participants in such debates to portray their opponents as supporters of libertinism or female insubordination.12 If the relationship between the Revolution and gender ideologies was not straightforward, it was still significant. The Glorious Revolution also ultimately enshrined religious toleration, both reflecting and encouraging a decline in religious zeal.13 This decline meant that ideas about women’s place in society could no longer as obviously or easily be explained in terms of God’s will, and this reinforced the need for alternative explanations. Eighteenth-century thinkers found such explanations in the ideas associated with the Scientific Revolution and early Enlightenment. A new emphasis on controlling nature through the use of reason, and the gendered associations of these terms (masculine reason versus feminine nature), held significant implications for ideas about human gender roles.14 As the human body came under increasing scientific study, women in particular came to be seen as suitable objects of scrutiny.15 New theories about 12

Weil, Political Passions. Weil is unusual in emphasizing the varieties even within political parties. Other recent works that have explored the relationship between Whig or Tory party ideologies and ideas about gender include Julia Rudolph, “Rape and Resistance: Women and Consent in Seventeenth-Century English Legal and Political Thought,” Journal of British Studies 39 (2000): 157–84; Ruth Perry, The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). 13 Patricia Crawford, Women and Religion in England 1500–1720 (London: Routledge, 1993), ch. 9; Roy Porter, “English Society in the Eighteenth Century Revisited,” in British Politics and Society from Walpole to Pitt, 1742–1789, ed. J. Black (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), pp. 29–52. Porter’s essay is a response to J. C. D. Clark, English Society, 1688–1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), which argues for the survival of a deeply pious, Anglican “ancien régime” throughout the eighteenth century. The second edition of Clark’s book (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) maintains the original argument. 14 Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England, 1500–1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 286–91; Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), ch. 5, especially p. 154; Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), ch. 5. 15 Londa Schiebinger, Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), ch. 2; Ludmilla Jordanova, Sexual Visions: Images of Gender in Science and Medicine between the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989); L. J. Jordanova, “Natural Facts: A Historical Perspective on Science and Sexuality,” in Nature, Culture and Gender, ed. C. P. MacCormack and M. Strathern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 42–69; Laqueur, Making Sex; Schiebinger, Mind Has No Sex, chs. 6–8. For a reading of Laqueur that emphasizes the space created for “gender play” in the eighteenth century, see Dror Wahrman, “Percy’s Prologue: From Gender Play to Gender Panic in Eighteenth-Century England,” Past and Present 159 (1998): 153–6. 8

INTRODUCTION

the nervous system, and women’s supposedly more active nerves and emotional susceptibility, worked to strengthen ideas about strict gender divisions, associating women with an incapacity to take part in public life.16 Interest in the supposed biological differences between men and women reinforced ideas about their respective social roles. Increasingly, women’s bodies were portrayed as radically different from men’s – and in turn, women’s bodies were seen as determining their personalities and capabilities. Other important transformations took place at the same time in social and economic practices. What has been termed the “financial revolution,” with the enormous expansion of public and private credit, spurred the growth of the stock market and other forms of wealth that were less and less dependent on land.17 The expansion of alternative investment opportunities, in the Bank of England, the East India, Royal Africa, and South Sea Companies, and many private enterprises, created a burgeoning paper economy that both fascinated and horrified contemporaries. Women were among the greatest beneficiaries of and most active participants in these new financial practices, given their historical lack of access to landed wealth. Increasingly, for example, married women’s separate property and jointures were provided in the form of such investments.18 Yet contemporary attacks on investment schemes, which invariably highlighted women’s participation, associated female involvement with the unsavory reputation of these schemes. For many, the creation of public credit and a speculative economy meant a decline in older values of masculine, landed authority; as J. G. A. Pocock has shown, credit was associated with feminine fickleness and hysteria, and the “monied interest” was often portrayed as a woman.19

16

Robert Martensen, “The Transformation of Eve: Women’s Bodies, Medicine and Culture in Early Modern England,” in Sexual Knowledge, Sexual Science: The History of Attitudes to Sexuality, ed. R. Porter and M. Teich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 107–33; G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), ch. 1. 17 P. G. M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit 1688–1756 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1967); John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989). 18 Susan E. Whyman, Sociability and Power in Late-Stuart England: The Cultural Worlds of the Verneys 1660–1720 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 74–84; Susan Staves, “Investments, Votes, and ‘Bribes’: Women as Shareholders in the Chartered National Companies,” in Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition, ed. H. L. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 259–78; John Carswell, The South Sea Bubble, rev. ed. (Dover, NH: Alan Sutton, 1993), pp. 8, 116, 119; J. V. Beckett, The Aristocracy in England 1660–1914 (Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1986), p. 86. 19 J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), especially pp. 99–100, 114. See also Catherine Ingrassia, Authorship, Commerce, and Gender in Early Eighteenth-Century England: A Culture of Paper Credit (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Mark Hallett, The Spectacle of Difference: Graphic Satire in the Age of Hogarth (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 57–71. 9

WOMEN OF QUALITY

Associated with these financial changes was the astonishing growth of England’s consumer society.20 As England’s wealth dramatically increased during the early eighteenth century, so too did the range and availability of consumer goods. Commerce both generated wealth and provided goods on which to spend that wealth. In particular, large groups of what had previously been luxuries became necessities – notably, sugar and tea, but also dishes, furniture, and even artwork. At the same time, there were growing markets in new luxury items, along with the emergence of modern fashion in both clothing and consumer goods. Once again, women – the principal purchasers of many household goods – were highly visible in this new world of consumption. Leisure, too, became increasingly available in a wide array of commercial forms. The expansion of the theaters, the development of new forms of theatrical entertainment such as operas and oratorios, and the opening of venues like the pleasure gardens of Ranelagh and Vauxhall, as well as both public and private masquerades, concerts, and assemblies, meant that entertainment was available on an unprecedented scale. Spas and leisure towns also expanded, attracting ever-growing numbers of visitors seeking health and recreation. Women were particularly associated with all these forms of leisure, their widespread presence in such a variety of public venues both supporting commercial ventures and creating enormous cultural anxiety.21 This anxiety fueled a growing desire on the part of many social observers to delineate a domestic sphere in which women ought to remain, devoted to the care of household and family. Along with the development of a consumer culture came the increasing importance of London in English – and British – life. Always the center of political and economic power, London came to take on an even greater role in the cultural life of the nation during the early eighteenth century. Many of the new opportunities in leisure, particularly in the theater and the pleasure gardens, were uniquely available there, while London remained the center for 20

The groundbreaking works on the subject were J. H. Plumb, The Commercialization of Leisure in Eighteenth-Century England (Reading: University of Reading, 1973); N. McKendrick, J. Brewer, and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982). 21 The literature on these topics is large and growing rapidly. Some of the most important recent discussions are Vickery, Gentleman’s Daughter, chs. 5, 7; John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), ch. 1; Ann Bermingham and John Brewer, eds., The Consumption of Culture, 1600–1800: Image, Object, Text (London: Routledge, 1995); John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds., Consumption and the World of Goods (London: Routledge, 1993); BarkerBenfield, Culture of Sensibility, ch. 4; Peter Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town, 1660–1770 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989); Lorna Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain, 1660–1760 (London: Methuen, 1988). For specific aspects of consumerism, see the works cited in Chapters 2 and 5, below. 10

INTRODUCTION

publishing and the distribution of fashionable goods. As its influence spread, the city became increasingly attractive as a cultural center for even the most remote gentry. Studies of local political positions during this period reveal a similar pattern of decreasing interest in these positions in favor of interest in more nationally-oriented politics.22 A new culture emerged, which stressed politeness, urbanity, and participation in the fashionable activities of London as well as in London-based national politics.23 It was clearly a culture in which women had as great an investment as men. While recent scholars have discussed all these developments to a greater or lesser extent, it is worth emphasizing their enormous cumulative impact on English culture in the years following the Glorious Revolution. Those researchers who have discussed the larger implications of these changes for gender relations have often focused on the middle class, and the creation of masculine and feminine “bourgeois” culture.24 Without wishing to detract from the importance of the expanding middling orders during this period, I want to draw attention to the impact of these changes on members of the elite. In many ways, the transformation of English society affected the aristocracy as significantly as it did their social inferiors. The development of new commercial forms, for example, implicitly called into question

22

Whyman, Sociability and Power; Victor Stater, Duke Hamilton is Dead! A Story of Aristocratic Life and Death in Stuart Britain (New York: Hill and Wang, 1999); James M. Rosenheim, The Emergence of a Ruling Order: English Landed Society 1650–1750 (London: Longman, 1998); Felicity Heal and Clive Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales, 1500–1700 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 187–9; James M. Rosenheim, The Townshends of Raynham: Nobility in Transition in Restoration and Early Hanoverian England (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1989); James M. Rosenheim, “County Governance and Elite Withdrawal in Norfolk, 1660–1720,” in The First Modern Society: Essays in English History in Honour of Lawrence Stone, ed. A. L. Beier, David Cannadine, and James M. Rosenheim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 95–126; Norma Landau, The Justices of the Peace, 1679–1760 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984); Philip Jenkins, The Making of a Ruling Class: The Glamorgan Gentry 1640–1790 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), ch. 9; Peter Roebuck, Yorkshire Baronets 1640–1760: Families, Estates, and Fortunes (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the University of Hull, 1980), pp. 52–8; Rosalind K. Marshall, The Days of Duchess Anne: Life in the Household of the Duchess of Hamilton 1656–1716 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973), ch. 7; J. H. Plumb, “The Walpoles: Father and Son,” in Studies in English Social History: A Tribute to G. M. Trevelyan, ed. J. H. Plumb (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1955), pp. 179–207. 23 Brewer, Pleasures of the Imagination; Dror Wahrman, “National Society, Communal Culture: An Argument About the Recent Historiography of Eighteenth-Century Britain,” Social History 17 (1992): 43–72. 24 Maurer, Proposing Men; Margaret R. Hunt, The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England, 1680–1780 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996); Peter Earle, The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London, 1660–1730 (London: Methuen, 1989); Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England 1727–1783 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). 11

WOMEN OF QUALITY

aristocratic claims to power on the basis of landownership. Even though land continued to be central to wealth and power during the eighteenth century, it is equally true that the aristocracy participated in many of the forms of investment and entrepreneurship that developed during this period. Similarly, as those who did not own land sought admission into public power, they increasingly turned to alternative ways of justifying such power. Members of the landed elite had to reply to these ideas with new ideologies of their own, or by shoring up their old interests. We can see such a response, for example, in the theories of politeness, aristocracy, and political power articulated by the third Earl of Shaftesbury.25 As discussed above, the nature of aristocratic power also changed, shifting away from locally-based authority, derived from landownership in a particular area, to a focus on national politics centered in London.26 Finally, aristocrats had both the wealth and the leisure to participate in the vast array of social diversions and to purchase the many new consumer goods on a scale far greater than their lower-ranking contemporaries could. It is no surprise, then, that so much of the anxiety of social critics focused on fashionable women of leisure like Addison’s Fulvia. Such anxiety has led many modern scholars to see these commentators as representing a middle-class sensibility, but it is the argument of this book that such ideas were also important for the very women who were apparently their greatest targets. Addison mocks Fulvia’s vision of herself as a “Woman of Quality,” the phrase that provides the title for this book. When early eighteenth-century writers sought to describe the upper echelons of their society, they most often referred, not to the peerage, the nobility, the aristocracy, or the elite, but to the “Quality.” The term was often used to satirize fashionable society, as in Addison’s case, or to criticize female misbehavior, as in Lady Strafford’s remarks about Lady Mary Gore’s self-description. But it could also be used quite seriously in a positive sense; Lady Strafford, for instance, proudly informed her husband on another occasion that “all the People of Quality in town” attended her weekly assembly.27 The phrase usefully reflects a variety of concerns. The contrast referred to between “citizens” and “Quality” in Lady Mary Gore’s case shows the importance of birth. Yet, unlike the nobility, one did not have to be born with a title to be a member of the Quality. The concept is thus similar to J. V. Beckett’s definition of the aristocracy:

25 Lawrence E. Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Lawrence E. Klein, “The Third Earl of Shaftesbury and the Progress of Politeness,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 18 (1984–5): 186–214. 26 See the works cited above, n. 22, and Beckett, Aristocracy, chs. 10–11. 27 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 15 January 1736/37, BL Add. MS 31145, fol. 149v.

12

INTRODUCTION

a governing class, a social estate of rulers and leaders. As such it stretched from the peerage assembled in the House of Lords, through the titled non-peers, to the gentry landowners acting as justices of the peace. Within this range social distinctions were recognized, but all were part of a single indivisible whole.28

“Quality” also carried with it explicitly social and cultural connotations, however; it was not just about political rule but about participation in a shared range of activities and familiarity with a shared code of behavior. One demonstrated one’s membership in the Quality by knowing how to act in social situations, by revealing taste and gentility. Finally, the term embodies the sense of moral as well as social superiority with which members of this elite viewed themselves. As Addison’s remarks reveal, many didactic writers chose to stress the irony of such claims by connecting assertions of quality to fashionable idleness, but it is precisely the ambiguous nature of the term in the early eighteenth century that makes it useful for my purposes. Debates over the membership of the Quality – and over its moral and social dimensions – form the heart of this book.29 In the pages that follow, I will examine the lives and words of women who considered themselves women of quality. They range from duchesses to those without noble title. But they all participated in an extensive network of connections and associations – cultural, political, and social, as well as familial. To attempt any rigid delineation of their status is to undertake an impossible task, given their tangled interrelationships. Because of the high number of relatively new titles in the peerage during the period of this study, it would be particularly unrewarding to focus only on those with titles as if they had a special background.30 Moreover, English primogeniture inevitably led to large numbers of younger sons and daughters who came from a background of wealth, status, and privilege legally dropping out of the highest echelons of the elite.31 Yet they continued to participate to a large extent in the same milieu as their titled relations. And there was real, if limited,

28 Beckett, Aristocracy, p. 21. See also M. L. Bush, The English Aristocracy: A Comparative Synthesis (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), pp. 2–4. James Rosenheim’s discussion of the landed elite is similar as well: Emergence of a Ruling Order. Nevertheless, “aristocracy” today often carries much more restrictive connotations. See, e.g., John Cannon, Aristocratic Century: The Peerage of Eighteenth Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 29 Throughout this book, I use the term “aristocratic” to describe the women of this study, there being no adjectival form of “Quality.” I use “the Quality” to refer to the entire social group, and “women of quality” to refer to individuals who would see themselves as members of the Quality. 30 I am grateful to Frances Harris for drawing my attention to this point. 31 Lawrence Stone and Jeanne C. Fawtier Stone, An Open Elite? England 1540–1880 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 5–6.

13

WOMEN OF QUALITY

possibility for upward mobility within the elite.32 Henrietta Hobart married Charles Howard when there was no apparent prospect of his inheriting any title, but after a freak series of deaths he became the Earl of Suffolk.33 But there was no need for this inheritance to prove their status; both were courtiers, and she was the mistress of George II. Henrietta Knight held no title until her estranged husband became an Irish lord, but she was closely connected to one of the greatest families in the peerage through her friendship with the Countess of Hertford, and was herself the daughter of a baron and half-sister of Henry, Lord Bolingbroke. Such examples could be multiplied. To attempt to untangle these webs of relationships and generational transitions in order to create a clear hierarchy of families would be futile. Naturally there were gradations of status of which everyone was aware, and moments when these gradations were of particular importance: in court ceremonies, for instance, when precedence was determined by a strict hierarchy of titles. But such events did not prevent acquaintance, friendship, and even marriage among individuals who did not necessarily share the same official status. This book consists of two uneven sections. The first section discusses the ideals of femininity presented to women in the early eighteenth century. It focuses on conduct manuals for women, which underwent a boom in publication during this period, and which systematically sought to create the ideal woman; it is based on a comprehensive survey of conduct books published from the Glorious Revolution to the accession of George III. In order to demonstrate that the values expressed in these works were not simply the views of a tiny minority of extremists, however, this section also draws on materials from a range of other sources, including periodicals, plays, prints, and novels. My goal is not to deny that there was a wide variety of views about women during the early eighteenth century, but to demonstrate the widespread acceptance of the ideals presented in their crudest and most comprehensive form in the conduct manuals.

32

T. H. Hollingsworth, “The Demography of the British Peerage,” Population Studies, Supplement to vol. 18, no. 2 (1964–5), stresses the possibility of upward mobility for commoners marrying peers. His argument has been questioned by Stone and Stone, Open Elite, and David Thomas, “The Social Origins of Marriage Partners of the British Peerage in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Population Studies 26 (1972): 99–111. But see Patricia Courtney Otto, “Daughters of the British Aristocracy: Their Marriages in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries with Particular Reference to the Scottish Peerage” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1974), and David Lemmings, “Marriage and the Law in the Eighteenth Century: Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753,” Historical Journal 39 (1996): 339–60, which both provide evidence of significant mobility within the elite. Lemmings argues that Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act was, in fact, a defensive reaction on the part of the peerage to the ability of commoners to marry peers. 33 For details, see Lewis Melville, Lady Suffolk and her Circle (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1924), p. 3n. 14

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1 focuses on the two keystones of early eighteenth-century feminine values: the emphasis on personal modesty and chastity, and the valorization of the sentimental marriage. Writers in this period departed from their predecessors in their argument that female modesty and chastity were not merely socially necessary but natural to all women. Similarly, they insisted that marriage as a loving but unequal partnership between man and wife was women’s natural destiny. Presenting themselves as friends of women, not so much restricting them as guiding them toward the behavior that would make them most happy and fulfilled, didactic writers effaced the prescriptive role of their works. The second chapter then discusses the specific behaviors addressed in the didactic literature. In their attempts to create the ideal, self-regulating woman, conduct manuals dictated an astonishingly detailed set of prescriptions and proscriptions, covering everything from the clothes a woman could wear to the friends she could keep, the books she could read, and the places she could go. Focusing their attention on those activities they perceived as characteristic of fashionable society, conduct writers and other social critics portrayed these activities as dangerous, luring women away from their natural responsibilities in the home and destroying society by encouraging luxury and vice. At the same time, however, they portrayed fashionable behavior as naturally attractive to women. They thus equated this behavior with femininity even as they blamed it for the breakdown of social morality and the destruction of home life. The second, larger section of the book draws on the personal writings of a sample of women, to investigate the relationships between the ideals of femininity and aristocratic women’s lived experiences. My fundamental criterion in choosing the women I discuss was the existence of substantial amounts of their correspondence or other personal writings. It is not, therefore, a group or family biography (though many of these women were in fact related by blood or marriage). Yet the women who form the subject of this book did all consider themselves to be women of quality, sharing the culture and status I have just discussed. Rather than attempting the impossible task of surveying all elite women over seventy years, this book focuses instead on some particularly rich troves of female writing, supplemented by more impressionistic use of additional sources.34 In some cases, the breadth of available material is astonishing. Lord Strafford’s mother, for instance, wrote to him almost every post between 1707 and 1714 – several hundred letters – while there are more than two hundred extant letters to him from his

34 Women who loom large in this work include the Earl of Strafford’s wife, mother, sisters, and daughters; Mary, Countess Cowper; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; Henrietta Howard, Countess of Suffolk; Jane Bentinck, Countess of Portland, and her daughters; Henrietta Knight, Lady Luxborough; Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford; Mary Delany; and Frances Boscawen.

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wife, and dozens more from his sisters, daughters, and nieces. Such a vast amount of correspondence from a single family allows us to observe individual personalities and relationships. At the same time, using more than one such source enables us to trace differences as well as similarities among women. My goal is not to argue that all women slavishly adhered to feminine ideals, or to deny that there were those who could and did choose to flaunt social norms. I do want to suggest, however, that feminine values played a more important role in the lives of some of England’s most powerful women than has previously been recognized. This section examines the day-to-day role of gender in women’s experiences, arguing that women of quality could use feminine values to justify a wide range of behavior. Because of their social position, moreover, their choices about how they presented themselves were never strictly private. Their identification with feminine ideals could, paradoxically, help them to enhance their own and their families’ public standing. The chapters in this second section deal with the aspects of women’s lives that were of particular concern to conduct writers in the early eighteenth century. The third and fourth chapters address areas central to didactic authors’ vision of the ideal woman. Chapter 3 discusses aristocratic women and marriage, since marriage became the institution most important to feminine ideals in the early eighteenth century. Despite the significance of material and status considerations in aristocratic marriages, many women employed the language of love and obedience that was central to the conduct books. They insisted on their love for their husbands and their submissiveness not only in happy marriages but in times of marital tension or breakdown as well. Chapter 4 looks at women’s roles as household managers. Conduct authors presented the household as woman’s privileged domain, the arena in which she wielded power through her control of expenditure and her management of servants. Ideals of financial restraint and feminine domesticity often led aristocratic women to emphasize their own moderation and retirement as signs of social responsibility and feminine virtue. Yet the importance of the elite household as a site for the demonstration of wealth and status, and thus for public display, complicated their relationship to the moralists’ vision of the home as a space completely distinct from public life. The remaining chapters move beyond family and household. Chapter 5 examines aristocratic women’s roles in consumption and fashion, arguing that they were active participants in a culture which simultaneously demanded competitive display and attacked feminine luxury. Women of quality often drew on the language of the conduct books to justify their own choices as examples of moderate adherence to social norms, while also relying on the moralizing critique of such consumption to make judgments about others. Chapter 6 follows similar themes through a discussion of sociability and politeness. For these women, participating in the rounds of sociable behavior and understanding the polite rituals of their society were an essential means 16

INTRODUCTION

of upholding their own and their families’ status. Yet, as with consumption, such activities were vulnerable to the criticism that they took women away from their proper domestic concerns and allowed them too much public visibility. The widespread depiction of these activities as merely idle timewasting, without an explicit recognition of the important social and political purposes they served, made them difficult to defend. The seventh and final chapter focuses on the area from which the didactic writers believed women should be entirely prohibited: public life. While previous chapters emphasize the public significance of seemingly private domains such as the household and consumption, this chapter explores aristocratic women’s involvement in areas from which females were explicitly and officially excluded. Some direct participation in politics and patronage was possible for women of quality, but far more important for most women in this study was their use of “influence” in public affairs, through which they exercised considerable economic and political clout. Influence in this period was explicitly accepted as part of public life – unlike the informal arenas of sociability – and men and women participated together in networks of influence. Through their political connections or wealth, women could act as power brokers in a wide range of activities. The women of this study – women of quality – came from families of wealth and rank. They attended court celebrations together, saw the same plays, read the same novels. Often they knew each other and were the subject of each other’s gossip. Many of them were also related, thanks to the complex network of kinship that characterized the Quality. They made matches appropriate to their status, usually with the approbation of their families and with a keen sense of the social and financial stakes. They had the wealth, leisure, and social connections that allowed them to participate in the fashionable diversions offered in London, and they spent much of their time engaging in such activities. I make no claims that they represent all aristocratic women. But through their words and actions we can begin to explore the complex interactions between ideology and behavior as we witness them negotiating the various, often conflicting, demands of status, gender, and their own desires.

17

1

Ideals of Femininity How did early eighteenth-century women know how to behave? What were the standards against which their actions were measured? As they always had, they learned from their parents, and from observing others at home, on visits, and in public. They listened, as they had for centuries, to sermons providing information both general and specific about virtuous life. And, more and more, they were exposed to feminine norms through print. The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries saw a tremendous boom in the publication and sales of all forms of printed material, of which women were important consumers.1 This trend in turn helped to create and feed a demand for literature aimed specifically at women, which both responded to changing perceptions of women’s roles in society and shaped those changing perceptions.2 Eighteenth-century women readers were thus bombarded with advice on proper behavior. An enormous range of didactic works, poems, stories, essays, and images, all told women what to do – and what not to do. Such advice was, in turn, part of a larger movement aimed at creating a more moral society. The most popular periodical of the eighteenth century, the Spectator, was explicitly didactic in its intent, seeking to reform its readers while it entertained them. Many others claimed the same purpose; indeed, the periodical has been defined as a genre of literature designed to instruct

1 Jacqueline Pearson, Women’s Reading in Britain, 1750–1835: A Dangerous Recreation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Shawn Lisa Maurer, Proposing Men: Dialectics of Gender and Class in the Eighteenth-Century English Periodical (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 136; G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 164–5; Jan Fergus, “Women, Class, and the Growth of Magazine Readership in the Provinces, 1746–80,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 16 (1986): 41–56. 2 On literature and gender in this period, see, among many others, Catherine Ingrassia, Authorship, Commerce, and Gender in Early Eighteenth-Century England: A Culture of Paper Credit (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Nancy Armstrong, “The Rise of the Domestic Woman,” in The Ideology of Conduct, ed. N. Armstrong and L. Tennenhouse (New York: Methuen, 1987), pp. 96–141; Janet Todd, Sensibility: An Introduction (London: Methuen, 1986). On periodical literature specifically, see Maurer, Proposing Men; Ros Ballaster et al., Women’s Worlds: Ideology, Femininity and the Woman’s Magazine (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), ch. 2; Kathryn Shevelow, Women and Print Culture: The Construction of Femininity in the Early Periodical (London: Routledge, 1989).

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IDEALS OF FEMININITY

while it pleased.3 In art, William Hogarth produced works depicting the benefits of virtuous life and – with more relish – the wages of sin. His contemporaries praised his paintings and bought his prints in huge numbers. Much of the new drama of the early eighteenth century explicitly sought to promote moral edification, in contrast to the libertine works of the Restoration; and plays by reform-minded writers like Richard Steele and Susannah Centlivre met an enthusiastic audience. As Horace Walpole pointed out with some amusement, licentious plays of the seventeenth century were still performed; yet they were often rewritten to bring them more in line with the new values – bowdlerization was not a uniquely Victorian phenomenon.4 Women were at the heart of this new reforming impulse. In a dramatic departure from the view of women as dangerous, unstable, and sexually voracious that had been received wisdom through the seventeenth century, women were increasingly told that they were essential in upholding the moral order.5 The Spectator, for instance, stressed its goal of instructing not just men but women, teaching the latter “all the becoming Duties of Virginity, Marriage, and Widowhood.”6 New, sentimental plays were frequently presented as both designed for women and responding to demands from the “fair sex.” Even misogynist literature was influenced by this trend; satirists like Alexander Pope were more willing than their Restoration predecessors to balance vicious attacks on women with highly idealized portraits of female exemplars.7

3 Maurer, Proposing Men, pp. 74, 136. The Spectator sold some 3000 copies a day when it first came out, and may have reached another thousand readers through informal circulation; reprints reached their twelfth edition in 1739, with seven others by 1757 in England alone, as well as editions in Dublin, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. Donald F. Bond, ed., The Spectator, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 1: xxvi–xxviii; F. A. Childs, “Prescriptions for Manners in English Courtesy Literature, 1690–1760, and Their Social Implications” (D. Phil., University of Oxford, 1984), p. 351. 4 Horace Walpole, Memoirs of King George II, ed. John Brooke, 3 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 3: 9–10: “Our stage grew chaste; indecency dared not to show its face in a modern comedy, though it still remained in possession of the old ones; and what is remarkable, having been tolerated when women went to the theatre in masks, preserved its hold, now they went without them.” Frances M. Kavenik, British Drama, 1660–1779: A Critical History (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995), ch. 3; Todd, Sensibility, ch. 3, especially pp. 35–6 (on altering plays). 5 For older views, see Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England, 1500–1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), ch. 4; Antonia Fraser, The Weaker Vessel (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), pp. 1–5; Ian Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Woman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). 6 Spectator 4 (5 March 1711), 1: 21–2. 7 Felicity Nussbaum, The Brink of All We Hate: English Satire on Women, 1660–1750 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1984).

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Much of the literature explicitly intended for women shared in this moralizing purpose. Conduct books, the most extreme case, flourished during the eighteenth century, but there was also great overlap between conduct manuals and other genres. Some writers produced works for and about women that combined fiction with moralizing intent; Eliza Haywood’s Female Spectator, for instance, resembled its more famous predecessor in more than name.8 Richard Steele not only wrote the periodicals and plays most consistently recommended for women, but also published The Ladies Library, which was designed to provide a set of suitably instructive material for women to read.9 Perhaps the best example of the fluidity between conduct literature and fiction, however, is the work of Samuel Richardson. He set out to rescue the novel from its immoral associations with older romances, and did so with a vengeance, often at the expense of plot and character development.10 Edward Young even called Clarissa “the Whole Duty of a Woman,” echoing the popular Whole Duty of Man and (perhaps unwittingly) the conduct book for women already published under that title.11 Moreover, some of Richardson’s didactic Familiar Letters Upon Important Occasions became the basis of his novel Pamela. In turn, Pamela and his other novels were frequently recommended as acceptable reading matter for young women. Finally, Richardson himself extracted a collection of Moral and Instructive Sentiments from his novels for separate publication.12 Conduct books for women thus participated in a much larger moralizing discourse. Although many scholars have argued against depending too much on what they see as the atypical views of a tiny minority, such works have been the subject of little systematic

8

Ingrassia, Authorship, Commerce, and Gender, pp. 108–9, 122. Steele was widely believed to have compiled the anthology, but in fact he hired George Berkeley for the task: Stephen Parks, “George Berkeley, Sir Richard Steele and The Ladies Library,” Scriblerian 13 (1980): 1–2. 10 John Mullan, Sentiment and Sociability: The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), ch. 2; Todd, Sensibility, pp. 70–1; Marlene LeGates, “The Cult of Womanhood in Eighteenth-Century Thought,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 10 (1976): 21–39; Ingrassia, Authorship, Commerce, and Gender, especially ch. 4. 11 Quoted in Todd, Sensibility, p. 71. The Whole Duty of a Woman: Or, an Infallible Guide to the Fair Sex. Containing, Rules, Directions, and Observations, for their Conduct and Behaviour through all Ages and Circumstances of Life, As Virgins, Wives, or Widows (London: T. Read, 1737). This was largely based on Richard Allestree’s Ladies Calling, which is discussed below. Another work of the same name was also published in 1753: [William Kenrick], The Whole Duty of Woman. By a Lady. Written at the Desire of a Noble Lord (London: R. Baldwin, 1753). 12 Samuel Richardson, Familiar Letters on Important Occasions, ed. B. W. Downs (1741; London: George Routledge & Sons, 1928); Samuel Richardson, A Collection of the Moral and Instructive Sentiments, Maxims, Cautions, and Reflexions, Contained in the Histories of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison (London: S. Richardson, 1755). On the origins of Pamela in Familiar Letters, see Margaret Anne Doody, A Natural Passion: A Study of the Novels of Samuel Richardson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), p. 30. 9

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scrutiny.13 Yet they provide a particularly useful source for the historian seeking to trace ideals of femininity. It was in this didactic literature that writers presented the clearest – because crudest – formulation of both ideas about women’s proper behavior and rationalizations for such ideas. I am not suggesting that conduct books represented the only discourse of femininity. The same society that produced conduct literature also produced pornography that reveled in female sexuality (though these works were aimed at a male audience). The same period in which conduct authors glorified wifely submission and domesticity saw the publication of Mary Astell’s works and pamphlets such as The Hardships of the English Laws in Relation to Wives. Nor could the creators of explicitly didactic texts control readers’ response to their creations. Lovelace, the rapist in Clarissa, was attractive in many respects, as even Richardson’s most avid admirers attested. “I cannot help being fond of Lovelace,” complained Lady Dorothy Bradshaigh to the author. “A sad dog! why would you make him so wicked, and yet so agreeable?”14 Such works were also terribly vulnerable to parody; one need look no further than Henry Fielding’s responses to Pamela, his Shamela and Joseph Andrews, both of which satirized the extreme modesty and social mobility of its heroine. The sheer visual appeal of Hogarth’s portrayal of low life almost overwhelms its moral purpose, and his satire is so wide-ranging that it can be difficult to ascertain any positive values from it.15 Similarly, the popularity of moralizing stories about young women gone astray surely owed something to their luscious descriptions of romance and seduction.16 And it was perfectly possible, as recent scholars have argued, for audiences to read books and the lessons of femininity in ways that questioned or subverted their authors’ intentions. The Spectator’s list of books supposedly owned by a widow included “Advice to a Daughter,” but also a novel whose spine was broken at “the Place that describes two Lovers in a Bower.”17 13

See Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), Introduction, especially pp. 5–10; Robert B. Shoemaker, Gender in English Society, 1650–1850: The Emergence of Separate Spheres? (London: Longman, 1998), ch. 2. The only recent works that extensively treat didactic literature for women in this period are Childs, “Prescriptions for Manners,” ch. 5; and Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination, ch. 19. See also Vivien Jones, Women in the Eighteenth Century: Constructions of Femininity (London: Routledge, 1990). Suzanne W. Hull, Chaste, Silent and Obedient: English Books for Women, 1475–1640 (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1982), investigates conduct books in an earlier period. 14 Quoted in Mullan, Sentiment and Sociability, pp. 105–6. 15 See Mark Hallett, The Spectacle of Difference: Graphic Satire in the Age of Hogarth (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), ch. 3, on the multiple possible readings of Hogarth’s Harlot’s Progress. 16 See, e.g., Eliza Haywood, The Female Spectator, 6th ed., 4 vols. (London, 1766), 1: 43–51. For a similar point regarding John Dunton’s overtly moralizing, yet also titillating, periodical The Night Walker, see Maurer, Proposing Men, ch. 3. 17 Spectator 37 (12 April 1711), 1: 154–8. See Pearson, Women’s Reading; Vivien Jones, 21

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There is no doubt, then, that there was an enormous variety of ideas about gender roles in early eighteenth-century English society. Indeed, it is an important goal of this book to argue that feminine ideals were not the straitjacket for women that they have sometimes been portrayed to be. But while it is right to emphasize the diversity of opinions about women, it is equally important not to lose sight of those ideas that were most commonplace and least controversial. This and the following chapter will deal with these mainstream ideas, expressed in their most systematic form in conduct manuals for women, but also found in many other genres. I hope to draw attention once more to the apparently obvious, to stereotypes that were broadly agreed upon, even taken for granted. If there is a contradiction between the widespread acceptance of these ideals and the constantly embattled tone of didactic writers in the period, this is a contradiction I will try to explain. Because conduct books sought to create a comprehensive portrait of the ideal woman, they provide a useful structure for examining the main aspects of feminine ideology as it developed in the early eighteenth century. Conduct manuals sought to define every aspect of women’s lives, making them conscious of their sex not merely some of the time but constantly. The books were thus simultaneously highly general and minutely detailed. Often they began with the general characteristics of a good woman, above all her modesty. Modesty was in turn a sign of chastity, the most important characteristic of a woman in a patriarchal society that defined female honor in terms of sexual purity. From these general characteristics, authors descended to specifics. They spent much time on the importance of choosing a husband and on the proper conduct of a wife in relation to her husband, stressing not merely chastity but love and obedience. From the question of love and marriage, writers then went even further in their attempt to create the ideal woman, regulating every aspect of her behavior. They thus devoted chapters to subjects such as dress, visiting, dancing, conversation, and even which books were proper for women to read and the thoughts they should allow themselves to think. The overall effect was to create a woman who was constantly aware of the fact that she was a woman, one who never stopped checking her behavior and thoughts against the standards of ideal womanhood. Once internalized, the rules of a conduct manual would create a

“The Seductions of Conduct: Pleasure and Conduct Literature,” in Pleasure in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Roy Porter and Mary Mulvey Roberts (New York: New York University Press, 1996), pp. 108–32; Naomi Tadmor, “‘In the Even My Wife Read to Me’: Women, Reading and Household Life in the Eighteenth Century,” in The Practice and Representation of Reading in England, ed. James Raven, Helen Small, and Naomi Tadmor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 162–74; John Brewer, “Reconstructing the Reader: Prescriptions, Texts and Strategies in Anna Larpent’s Reading,” in Raven, Small, and Tadmor, eds., Practice and Representation of Reading, pp. 226–45. 22

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completely self-regulating woman, who would always behave as if she were being observed even when she was alone. The conduct manual for women began to develop as a genre during the seventeenth century. It evolved out of two separate but related traditions, courtesy books and pious literature, combining the detailed prescriptions for behavior of the courtesy books with the moralizing tone and emphasis on selfscrutiny of the pious literature.18 Although there had been didactic works written for and about women prior to this time, most of them dealt with particular areas of female conduct – advice for princesses or nuns, for example – rather than trying to create a complete woman, as was the goal of the later manuals. Moreover, they were rare in comparison to the numbers produced in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.19 One of the more popular early seventeenth-century works, Richard Brathwait’s English Gentlewoman (1631), appeared in three editions by its last printing in 1652. Compare this with Richard Allestree’s Ladies Calling (1673), which went through twelve editions by 1727, and which – in another eight editions from 1696 to 1737 – was also revised and published under the title The Whole Duty of a Woman. The Marquess of Halifax’s Lady’s New Year’s Gift; or, Advice to a Daughter, first published in 1688, had six English editions in the seventeenth century, as well as appearing in his collected works; it was republished twentyfive times in the eighteenth century.20 Many eighteenth-century works went through multiple editions as well. Thus, although it is obviously difficult to estimate actual readership, the sheer number of individual titles and the many editions sold suggest that there was considerable interest in this material. Publishing was, after all, a business, and writers as well as booksellers aimed to meet reader demand. This chapter begins with a brief discussion of four major conduct manuals from the seventeenth century. The rest of the chapter is devoted to early eighteenth-century didactic literature, arguing for a set of transformations in thinking about femininity that created a coherent ideology by about 1740. Ideas about female chastity were central to these changes. Like their predecessors, eighteenth-century writers focused on modesty, chastity, and submission as women’s most important characteristics, but rather than relying on biblical or social justifications, they presented these characteristics as the

18 Ingrid H. Tague, “Women and Ideals of Femininity in England, 1660–1760” (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 1997), pp. 46–8. 19 Hull, Chaste, Silent and Obedient; John E. Mason, Gentlefolk in the Making (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1935), ch. 1 passim, especially pp. 21–2; Kathleen M. Ashley, “Medieval Courtesy Literature and Dramatic Mirrors of Female Conduct,” in Armstrong and Tennenhouse, eds., Ideology of Conduct, pp. 25–38. 20 The above statistics are based on an examination of the English Short-Title Catalogue (ESTC) and the bibliography to Childs, “Prescriptions for Manners.” The sources listed were the most popular of the seventeenth-century manuals. Full bibliographic information is provided in the notes when they are first quoted.

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inevitable outgrowth of women’s nature. The institutional basis for this view of femininity was the companionate marriage. Authors insisted on the importance of love in marriage because only love could reward women’s willing obedience to their husbands, an obedience that was now portrayed as entirely natural. At the same time, didactic writers claimed that they were almost alone in their recognition of this natural inequality, and complained that they were battling against an increasing trend within fashionable society toward female usurpation of marital power. Rather than seeking such power, they suggested, women should embrace their natural destiny of marital bliss and wifely subordination. In return, they promised women true happiness and the satisfaction of presiding over a well-disciplined, orderly household.

Seventeenth-century conduct books This section will examine four of the most important conduct books of the seventeenth century – Richard Brathwait’s English Gentlewoman (1631); Jacques du Bosc’s Honnête Femme (first English edition, 1639); Richard Allestree’s Ladies Calling (1673); and the Marquess of Halifax’s Lady’s New Year’s Gift (1688) – to show how the genre developed and to establish the framework out of which the early eighteenth-century literature grew.21 Richard Allestree’s Ladies Calling and the Marquess of Halifax’s Lady’s New Year’s Gift were both hugely popular for decades. Neither of the earlier two works came close in terms of sales, but they are significant both for the values they shared with Allestree and Halifax and for the light they shed on the directions in which conduct manuals did not go as they evolved toward the uniformity of the eighteenth century. The conduct books of the seventeenth century were not seeking to present standards of behavior for all Englishwomen. On the contrary, they were selfconsciously oriented toward the gentlewoman or lady. Although the authors of these works were often not members of the elite themselves, they wrote with a keen awareness of their intended audience. Richard Brathwait, for instance, attacked garish foreign fashions, but he did accept luxurious dress:

21

Many other didactic works are listed in the bibliography to Childs, “Prescriptions for Manners,” and in Hilda L. Smith and Susan Cardinale, Women and the Literature of the Seventeenth Century: An Annotated Bibliography based on Wing’s Short-Title Catalogue (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990), Part II, pp. 125–300. The four discussed here are among the most popular. In addition to the three editions of Brathwait (1631, 1641, 1652) mentioned above, there were six editions of du Bosc in three separate translations: The Compleat Woman, trans. “N.N.” (1639); The Accomplish’d Woman, trans. Walter Montagu (1655, 1671, 1753); and The Excellent Woman. Described by Her True Characters and Their Opposites, trans. “T.D.” (1692, 1695). 24

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For albeit, some have affirmed that all gorgeous attire is the attire of sinne, the quality of the person may seeme to extenuate the quality of that sinne. For noble and eminent personnages were in all times admitted to weare them; and to be distinguished by them: Neither, indeed, is the sumptuousnesse of the habit so reprehensive as the phantasticknesse of the habit in respect of the forme or fashion.22

Some writers also invoked high birth to encourage specific virtues or to warn against vices. Allestree, for example, stated that he did not need to criticize shrewishness because it “cannot be frequent among that rank of women to whom this tract is intended: for if neither moral nor divine Considerations have prevented it, yet probably civility and a gentile education hath: a scold being a creature to be lookt for only in Stalls and Markets, not among persons of quality.”23 This awareness of rank had important ramifications because it allocated to female readers an active, public role, despite the many strictures on their behavior and conversation. In some cases this role could simply be assumed, as when Lord Halifax recommended liberality as a means of preserving the reputation of the family.24 His counsel took for granted that his readers’ spending patterns would occur – and be observed – in a public arena. Richard Brathwait similarly presumed that his readers would attend court, and advised special vigilance there: Not a wandring or indisposed haire, but gives occasion of observance to such as are neere. How requisite then is it for you, whose Nobler descents promise, yea, exact more of you then inferiours, to expresse your selves best in these best discerning and deserving places?25

The English translation of Jacques du Bosc not only glorified the court but attacked the country, mocking the parochial opinions of “some petty Regents in a Country Village, who would exercise a tyranny there where they ought rather to submit themselves.”26 The author was aware of the dangers of court life, but insisted that his women readers must not be kept ignorant, in “the

22

Richard Brathwait, The English Gentleman and English Gentlewoman, Both in One Volume Couched (London: John Dawson, 1641), p. 321. This claims to be the third edition, but the ESTC contains no record of a different second edition. 23 [Richard Allestree], The Ladies Calling. In Two Parts (Oxford: Printed at the Theater, 1673), p. 45. 24 George Savile, Marquess of Halifax, The Lady’s New Year’s Gift; or, Advice to a Daughter, in his Complete Works, ed. J. P. Kenyon (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 293. 25 Brathwait, English Gentlewoman, p. 309. 26 Jacques du Bosc, The Excellent Woman Described by her True Characters and Their Opposites, trans. “T. D.” (London: Joseph Watts, 1692), p. 28. 25

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untaught simplicity of the Village”: “In the Court, as in the Ocean, it is necessary to know the Shelves if we would avoid the Shipwreck.”27 During the eighteenth century, as we will see, didactic authors developed tighter restrictions on female behavior, and such awareness about women’s presence in public and the court all but disappeared. Seventeenth-century conduct manuals for women shared assumptions about rank, just as they shared long-standing ideas about the need for female modesty and chastity.28 Yet, despite such similarities, this literature had not yet reached the remarkable degree of uniformity that would come to characterize the genre in the next century. Although none of the four major works refers explicitly to another, juxtaposing them reveals many of the conflicting values that eventually disappeared in the decades to come. Jacques du Bosc’s Honnête Femme, available in three different English versions, provides an interesting example of one strand of conduct literature that had faded away by the end of the century. Although it had little impact on the subsequent development of the genre, it is useful for showing an alternative current of thought to that which eventually won out. Du Bosc wrote from within the Continental courtesy book tradition and was specifically addressing a debate – common in the French salon culture of the seventeenth century – about women’s innate abilities.29 Thus he accepted feminine intellect and sociability to a much greater degree than his native English counterparts, and his text was not so overwhelmingly dominated by an insistence on modesty and chastity. He freely admitted that much of his work contained information equally applicable to both sexes, particularly because he dealt more in general virtues than in specific behavior. “But what is it that they [his critics] could wish I had found out in particular for the Ladies, when they were to be taught the hatred of Vice and the pursuit of Vertue?” he asked. “Is there another and a particular Morality for them?”30 His book remained gender-neutral to a greater extent than the native English works, showing that the highly gendered works of the eighteenth century were not inevitable. Entire chapters, such as those “of friendship” or “of an equal mind under good and bad fortune,” never mentioned the specific qualities of women. His relative lack of concern over gender divisions in turn meant that he offered his female readers much freedom and a strongly

27

Du Bosc, Excellent Woman, p. 133. Tague, “Women and Ideals of Femininity,” pp. 53–5; Hull, Chaste, Silent and Obedient. 29 Carolyn C. Lougee, Le Paradis des Femmes: Women, Salons, and Social Stratification in Seventeenth-Century France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976); Anna Bryson, From Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998); Childs, “Prescriptions for Manners.” For a different reading of a French advice manual, see Vivien Jones, “Introduction,” in The Young Lady’s Pocket Library, Or Parental Monitor (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1995), pp. x–xvii. Jones emphasizes class and gender rather than nationality in her interpretation. 30 Du Bosc, Excellent Woman, p. 27. 28

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positive view of their intellect. Yet even in this work, there were signs of the acute gender awareness that would characterize later conduct books. Certain sections did exhibit a high degree of gender specificity; a chapter on “the debauched or lewd woman” referred explicitly and exclusively to women, while other chapters suggested that there were areas in which women needed special advice (in fending off the temptations of evil men, for example). Perhaps most significant is the fact that one English translation appeared in an abridged form, including only the sections that dealt specifically with women.31 In this work, then, we see the mutability of the genre, as well as suggestions of the form into which it would eventually crystallize. The contrasts among Halifax’s, Allestree’s, and Brathwait’s texts also demonstrate both the different strands of thought present in the seventeenthcentury works and the dramatic changes in ideas about women starting at the end of the century. Like du Bosc’s work, the Marquess of Halifax’s Lady’s New Year’s Gift represents an alternative strand of advice manuals, which was never developed among women’s conduct books. Unlike du Bosc, however, Halifax’s model came to dominate courtesy works for men.32 He emphasized, rather than tried to disguise, the fact that behavioral rules are created by humans to meet social needs. In his view women had the same natural constitutions as men, with a “natural love of liberty,” and he accepted the blatant unfairness of the sexual double standard: The root and the excuse of this injustice is the preservation of families from any mixture which may bring a blemish to them; and whilst the point of honour continues to be so placed, it seems unavoidable to give your sex the greater share of the penalty.33

He advocated resignation to an inequitable distribution of power rather than justifying this inequality on religious or natural grounds. Nonetheless, even he suggested that a truly dutiful woman would submit gladly to her husband, relying on her powers of moral suasion to reform an evil man. He also argued that there could be no exception to the family hierarchy even for

31

Du Bosc, The Accomplish’d Woman, trans. Walter Montagu (London: Gabriel Bedell and Tho. Collins, 1656 (i.e. 1655)). 32 On the development of conduct literature for men, see Childs, “Prescriptions for Manners”; Michael Curtin, “A Question of Manners: Status and Gender in Etiquette and Courtesy,” Journal of Modern History 57 (1985): 395–423; Jacques Carré, “Introduction,” in The Crisis of Courtesy: Studies in the Conduct-Book in Britain, 1600–1900, ed. J. Carré (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), pp. 1–8; Dieter A. Berger, “Maxims of Conduct Into Literature: Jonathan Swift and Polite Conversation,” in Carré, ed., Crisis of Courtesy, pp. 81–91; Mason, Gentlefolk in the Making. 33 Halifax, New Year’s Gift, pp. 271, 279. See Keith Thomas, “The Double Standard,” Journal of the History of Ideas 20 (1959): 195–216; Childs, “Prescriptions for Manners,” p. 272. 27

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“extraordinary women” because “the institution of marriage is too sacred” to change; “the supposition of yours being the weaker sex having without all doubt a good foundation” further proved that the divine rule was best. At most, Halifax paid lip service to such excuses, and the majority of his treatise was a practical guide to surviving a bad marriage.34 Yet just as this fact and his continuing popularity throughout the eighteenth century show the survival of alternatives to ideas about women based on nature, so the fact that he felt the need to insert some justifications for women’s low status shows how powerful the dominant strain of conduct guides could be. Brathwait, in contrast, stressed morality and the biblical sanctions for proper female behavior. Brathwait’s interest lay in national and spiritual purity; he inveighed against foreign fashions, and he reminded his readers that their purpose on earth was solely to serve God. In attacking idleness, for example, he urged his readers to “Let this bee your highest taske; to promote the honour of your Maker, esteeming all things else a slavish and servile labour.”35 He appealed to class interests (“slavish and servile labour”), but he also insisted on the primacy of religious duties. Elsewhere, he praised virginity – marriage was good, virginity even better. His description of the ideal maiden was one who was modest because “the Sanctuary of her heart is solely dedicated to her Maker; it can find no roome for an inordinate affection to lodge in.”36 This praise of virginity would disappear in an eighteenth-century discourse that depended on chastity within the idealized sentimental marriage for its ideological force. Brathwait’s deeply religious framework would not last, either. Although the intense self-scrutiny advocated here continued to be implicit in later writings, this kind of explicit reliance on religious models vanished in the eighteenth century, replaced by a more flexible, secular, but still heavily moralizing ideal. It is significant, then, that while Allestree’s and Halifax’s works were reprinted throughout the eighteenth century, Brathwait’s was not. Of all the seventeenth-century conduct manuals, Allestree’s Ladies Calling of 1673 most influenced the later development of the genre. Not only were multiple editions published under its own title, but it was widely quoted (usually without attribution) throughout the eighteenth century: Fenela Childs has traced its use as a source for another eight works between 1694 and 1753.37 The success of Allestree’s work represented the triumph of a deeply moral form of conduct literature for women, at the same time that courtesy 34 Halifax, New Year’s Gift, p. 278. Anthony Fletcher stresses Halifax’s idea of natural female subordination: Gender, Sex and Subordination, p. 389. I would argue that the bulk of his advice is nonetheless based on social needs rather than on nature in the universally positive sense in which eighteenth-century writers used it. 35 Brathwait, English Gentlewoman, pp. 287–8. 36 ibid., pp. 353, 385. 37 Childs, “Prescriptions for Manners,” p. 267, tracing Allestree in “N.H.,” Ladies Dictionary (1694); The Whole Duty of a Woman (1696); Darrell, Gentleman Instructed

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books for men were abandoning issues of morality to focus on outward behavior. As a clergyman and author of several spiritual guides – including the enormously popular Whole Duty of Man – Allestree framed much of his prescription for women’s behavior in religious terms. Thus he reminded his readers that fallen women risked not only their reputation but also their religion and eventually their souls; whores faced an eternity of damnation.38 In his discussion of the need for women to subordinate themselves to their husbands he also relied on a divine explanation: “since Gods assignation has thus determined subjection to be the womens lot, there needs no other argument of its fitness, or for their acquiescence. Therefore whenever they oppose it, the contumacy flies higher then the immediatSuperior [sic], and reaches God himself.”39 Yet he did not ultimately follow his own assertion that “Gods assignation” was argument enough, instead consistently offering another rationale for the behavior he was advocating. In his view, women’s roles were greatly influenced by “nature,” the concept that would become the foundation of eighteenth-century conduct manuals. He argued that women should remain chaste for moral reasons, but he also used metaphor to present another argument. Women, he suggested, were naturally so chaste that “they must commit a rape upon themselves (force their own reluctancies and aversions) before they can become willing prostitutes to others.”40 What he did with metaphor he also did with medical language. He criticized women who showed anger, not because of Christian morals but because “nature hath befriended women with a more cool and temperat [sic] constitution”; this natural disposition, he added, made angry women look particularly unattractive.41 But he was inconsistent in his characterization of women’s natural behavior, implying elsewhere that women were naturally more passionate than men. In this and in his attempts to combine both divine and natural injunctions, he embodied the transformation of a dominant view of women from highly sexual to sexually passive beings that was part of a broad shift in the perception of female nature. Allestree was above all a transitional figure, poised between traditional and new perspectives on femininity.

(1713); [Berkeley], Ladies Library (1714); Essex, Young Ladies Conduct (1722); Bland, Essay in Praise of Women (1733); Wilkes, Letter of Genteel and Moral Advice (1740); and Kenrick, Whole Duty of a Woman (1753). Full titles and citations for these works are given where they are first quoted below. 38 Allestree, Ladies Calling, p. 24. 39 ibid., p. 40. 40 ibid., p. 15. 41 ibid., p. 43. For a useful discussion of Allestree’s work in relation to changing medical theories, see Robert Martensen, “The Transformation of Eve: Women’s Bodies, Medicine and Culture in Early Modern England,” in Sexual Knowledge, Sexual Science: The History of Attitudes to Sexuality, ed. Roy Porter and Mikulas Teich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 120–2. 29

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Anthony Fletcher describes The Ladies Calling as “the first coherent account of female gender construction in largely secular terms to be published in England,” a description that recognizes its pivotal role.42 Yet religion remained crucial to Allestree’s justification of femininity, and his conception of female nature was not as fully developed as in later works.

Modesty, chastity, and feminine conduct in the early eighteenth century In these four conduct books of the seventeenth century, then, we can see the evolution of feminine ideals that would dominate later works, and we can also follow the areas of conflict that had not yet been ironed out. The didactic writers of the early eighteenth century adopted the moralizing tone and intense focus on modesty that were visible in the seventeenth-century works, but they shifted the terms of the debate to create a particularly powerful new ideology of feminine behavior. With the publication of Allestree’s Ladies Calling we can identify the birth of this new ideology, one that combined an agenda of female subordination with an insistence on the natural foundation for that subordination. During the period from about 1710 to 1740, conduct books developed a highly uniform set of values. The basis of this unity was what Fenela Childs has called “a new sentimentality of attitude towards women, characterised by an exaltation of feminine virtues and an idealisation of womanhood in general.”43 Accompanying this positive, sentimental view was a conception of proper feminine behavior as the spontaneous product of female “nature.”44 The creation of an ideology of natural purity meant that women could be praised for their virtues and contrasted with morally corrupt men. But another crucial result of this change was a transformation in the role allotted to women. Whereas seventeenth-century writers had accepted, even encouraged, the need for vigilant self-scrutiny and self-monitoring, eighteenth-century conduct manuals rhetorically denied women any agency, instead portraying them as passively transmitting the impulses of their inherently pure, modest, and chaste natures. The result was to force women to examine not only their actions but even their consciences with great care, but these manuals never admitted that such scrutiny was necessary. The decline of religious language in conduct books paralleled a more general shift toward secular explanations of social structures and human behavior during the early eighteenth century.45 Work in medicine and 42

Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination, p. 384. Childs, “Prescriptions for Manners,” p. 283. 44 It should be noted that the shift away from biblical models was not merely the result of a change in authorship; clergymen continued to write conduct books drawing on the new conventions, although proportionately their numbers declined. 45 See the works cited in the Introduction, above, pp. 8–9, nn. 15–16. 43

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anatomy increasingly emphasized the supposedly innate differences between men and women, and such attempts in scientific inquiry to codify gender differentiation were mirrored by similar enterprises in other fields throughout the eighteenth century. While early periodicals frequently assumed that both men and women would be among their readers, by the second half of the eighteenth century, many publishers offered magazines aimed specifically at women.46 This development was preceded by a growing insistence within early periodicals on rigid gender differentiation; creating complementary ideals of “natural” masculine and feminine behavior was central to the Spectator, for example.47 Such a focus on gender difference was present in the visual arts as well, and eighteenth-century portraiture increasingly emphasized distinctions of sex between male and female sitters, even among children.48 Certainly there were many examples of gender transgression during the early eighteenth century, such as the “breeches parts” for actresses, and popular ballads celebrating cross-dressing “women warriors.”49 But such instances served most often to reinforce gender boundaries by permitting and containing moments of transgression. It was safe to applaud actresses in breeches because those women were already at the margins of society and because the transgression was only temporary. And while many people reveled in such presentations, there were also many strident voices raised against any blurring of gender boundaries. Attempts by conduct writers to codify natural feminine behavior were thus part of a larger eighteenth-century discourse. The overriding concern behind this discourse was the preservation of female chastity – meaning virginity before marriage and fidelity within marriage – through the discipline of female modesty. Of course, seventeenth-century authors were equally insistent about chastity; during the early eighteenth century, however, arguments in favor of female modesty and chastity based on biblical commands or social dictates were largely dropped in favor of an overwhelming emphasis on natural female modesty. Visible in a range of behaviors, modesty was presented as the quintessential trait of true femininity, inherent in all women and only overcome by effort. Because of the association between modesty and sexual chastity, all forms of immodest behavior could be

46 Shevelow, Women and Print Culture; Shoemaker, Gender in English Society, pp. 39–40; Ballaster et al., Women’s Worlds, ch. 2. 47 Todd, Sensibility, especially pp. 17–21, 78–81. Maurer, Proposing Men. See especially p. 52, where she contrasts the Spectator’s naturalizing language with the Athenian Mercury’s recognition of socially constructed gender roles. 48 Marcia Pointon, Hanging the Head: Portraiture and Social Formation in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 184–96. 49 See Dror Wahrman, “Percy’s Prologue: From Gender Play to Gender Panic in Eighteenth-Century England,” Past and Present 159 (1998): 113–60; Dianne Dugaw, Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

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presented as potential sexual threats. Female virtue, modesty, and chastity thus became conflated as the basis of true femininity, and female sexuality lay at the heart of didactic writers’ concerns even as they increasingly sought to deny the existence of such sexuality. The conduct books themselves embodied this basic contradiction; writers insisted on innate female characteristics within the format of an overtly prescriptive genre which would appear to demand a recognition that behavior was learned. If feminine behavior was natural, why would women need to be instructed in it at all? This problem, never directly addressed by the writers themselves, was a defining characteristic of conduct writing during the eighteenth century.50 We can see this tension in other works as well, such as in Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees (first published under that title in 1714). As Michael McKeon has pointed out, Mandeville explicitly recognized the social construction of gender roles – specifically, the ways in which very young girls learned modest behavior. But Mandeville’s explanation of the reasons behind this education in modesty was rooted in an assumption of natural sexual difference: in men, he argued, “the [sexual] Appetite is more violent and ungovernable.” One sex had to be the aggressor to ensure the propagation of the species; thus “it was advisable to ease and indulge the Sex that suffer’d most by the Severity [i.e. the male], and make the Rules abate of their Rigour, where the Passion was the strongest, and the Burthen of a strict Restraint would have been the most intolerable.”51 Despite Mandeville’s acute awareness of gender roles as learned, he nonetheless turned to nature for a root cause. Other writers, less subtle than Mandeville, simply refused to acknowledge that this behavior had to be learned at all. By the 1730s, social commentators consistently presented innate female modesty as the most important guardian of chastity. One conduct book neatly summed up the common perception of women: modesty is “no more esteem’d a bare Ornament, but a Propriety of the Sex. So that a Woman discarded of Modesty, ought to be gaz’d upon as a Monster.”52 Attacking Alexander Pope’s famous statement that “ev’ry woman is at heart a rake,” the Weekly Oracle

50 Maurer provides a useful discussion of such tensions in the Spectator, which relies on an extended metaphor of Mr. Spectator as gardener, cultivating and pruning women’s natural characteristics: Proposing Men, pp. 154–67. 51 Michael McKeon, “Historicizing Patriarchy: The Emergence of Gender Difference in England, 1660–1760,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 28, no. 3 (1995): 302–3, quoting The Fable of the Bees, ed. F. B. Kaye (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), 1: 69–72. The Fable went through multiple editions and revisions, beginning with the 1705 publication of the poem The Grumbling Hive. The 1723 edition, to which McKeon refers, was the first to get much public notice. Kaye, ed., Fable of the Bees, 1: xxiii. 52 W[illiam] D[arrell], The Gentleman Instructed. . . . To which is Added, a Word to the Ladies, By Way of Supplement to the First Part, 8th ed. (London: E. Smith, 1723), p. 153. Childs also stresses the role of modesty in defending chastity: “Prescriptions for Manners,” pp. 275–83.

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complained that Pope tried to convince women “that they do but as becomes them, when they most contradict the Ends of their Creation.”53 Modesty was not only presented as woman’s preeminent natural characteristic, however; it was also portrayed as her greatest protection. For John Essex, modesty and discretion were “Qualifications which in all Ages have been regarded as the greatest Ornaments to the Fair Sex, and the surest Outguard to that most amiable and shining Virtue, Chastity.”54 A poem in Christopher Smart’s periodical The Midwife claimed that “The blooming Damsel, whose Defence/Is adamantine Innocence” had nothing to fear.55 The heroine of Steele’s Conscious Lovers (1722) knew her love was safe because she was aware of her own “Innocence” and her suitor’s “Honour.”56 These ideas also permeated eighteenth-century novels – most famously, Pamela – in which the heroine became the guardian of society’s morals through her innocence, reforming men by her virtuous example.57 But because modesty was supposed to be natural and spontaneous, it placed a double burden upon women to maintain their purity. “The fair Sex are not indulg’d so far, as to come within the Verge of Suspicion,” wrote the Free-Thinker in 1711, “which should be a standing Caution to them against giving, or taking, Freedoms, which may bear a double Construction.”58 Merely repulsing an unwanted offer was not enough, as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu observed in a brief poem: “Let this sure maxim be my virtue’s guide,/In part to blame she is, who has been tried;/Too near he has approached, who is denied.”59 Since modesty was supposed to be natural, didactic writers argued that women were most appealing in their natural simplicity, unembellished by art. This convention had a dual effect. First, it meant that modesty became simultaneously a sign of virtuous rejection of the body and the object of male sexual desire. Modesty thus embodied the didactic literature’s ambivalence toward sexuality, as it both represented the denial of female sexual desire and 53

The Weekly Oracle; or, Universal Library (1734–7; London: T. Read, 1737), p. 205. See also Patricia Meyer Spacks, “‘Ev’ry Woman is at Heart a Rake’,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 8 (1974): 27–46. 54 John Essex, The Young Ladies Conduct: Or, Rules for Education, Under Several Heads; With Instructions Upon Dress, Both Before and After Marriage. And Advice to Young Wives (London: John Brotherton, 1722), p. 4. 55 “The Power of Innocence,” in The Midwife: or the Old Woman’s Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 3 (1751). 56 Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers, in The Plays of Richard Steele, ed. Shirley Strum Kenny (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 295–381, especially p. 338. 57 LeGates, “Cult of Womanhood.” 58 Free-Thinker 5 (27 November–1 December 1711), reprinted in Contemporaries of the Tatler and Spectator, Augustan Reprint Society Publication No. 47 (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, 1954). 59 Quoted in Robert Halsband, The Life of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), p. 34. He notes that the poem, composed in the first year of her marriage, was later printed in The Plain Dealer, 27 April 1724. 33

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was itself presented as causing desire in men.60 Second, modesty was reified as a woman’s greatest possession, her most valuable form of property, but one which remained valuable only as long as she did not consciously use it for her own gain. Commentators agreed that her natural modesty was a woman’s most attractive quality. In 1747, one lengthy manual set out both the appeal of female modesty and male fears regarding its potential use: Especially in women, nothing is so graceful and becoming, as modesty. . . . It is so necessary a qualification for pleasing, that the loose part of womankind, whose study is to ensnare men’s hearts, never fail to support the appearance of what they know is so essential for that purpose.61

Another author reminded “the fair Sex, that however they may shine in Brocade, and Diamonds, Modesty is their brightest and most valuable Ornament.”62 Similarly, Wetenhall Wilkes insisted that “a just, and reasonable Modesty and native Simplicity of Looks, triumphs over all artificial Beauties. Like the Shades in Painting, they raise and round every Figure, and make those Colours look beautiful which would be too glaring.” 63 The tension between Wilkes’s insistence on “native Simplicity” and his metaphor of the highly artificial effects of a painting reveals the contradictions inherent in discussions of the allure of modesty. Yet so strong was this view that even in a pornographic parody of a conduct manual published in 1740, a description of the perfect woman broke out of the erotic mode to praise innate feminine modesty.64

60

See Jones, Women in the Eighteenth Century, p. 14: “The concern of all eighteenthcentury ‘conduct’ manuals for women is how women might create themselves as objects of male desire, but in terms which will contain that desire within the publicly sanctioned form of marriage.” 61 The Young Gentleman and Lady Instructed in Such Principles of Politeness, Prudence, and Virtue, as Will Lay a Sure Foundation for Gaining Respect, Esteem, and Satisfaction in This Life, and Eternal Happiness in a Future State . . ., 2 vols. (London: Edward Wicksteed, 1747), 1: 339. 62 Gentleman’s Magazine 1 (September 1731): 388–9, from Universal Spectator 155 (25 September). 63 Wetenhall Wilkes, A Letter of Genteel and Moral Advice to a Young Lady. In Which is Digested into a New and Familiar Method, a System of Rules and Informations, to Qualify the Fair Sex to be Useful and Happy in Every State (Dublin: E. Jones, 1740), p. 78. 64 A Dialogue between a Married Lady and a Maid (London: (n.p.), 1740), pp. 37, 41–2. This book is probably a revised and abridged translation of Nicolas Chorier’s Tullia and Octavia, first published around 1660. For a summary of Chorier’s book, see Roger Thompson, Unfit for Modest Ears: A Study of Pornographic, Obscene, and Bawdy Works Written or Published in England in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1979), pp. 28–33, 37. 34

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The deeply patriarchal agenda behind ideas of natural feminine modesty is visible in the recurring metaphor of chastity as property. Chastity, guarded by modesty, was a woman’s most valuable possession, and thus was in constant danger of being stolen. James Bland suggested that even talking to a stranger might make him try “to pinch her Belly; and either through his own Instigation, or some of his Fellow-Death and Destruction-hunters . . . take an Opportunity of carrying her off, marrying her, or which I had almost said, is worse, robbing her of her Jewels; and which is the greatest of all, her Chastity.” 65 The value of chastity was demonstrated by evil men’s attempts against it, said another commentator, “for a Robber always aims at the most valuable Treasure.”66 A later work reminded women of their role in the commerce of the marriage market. Once a woman was married, the author argued, she should stop trying to allure men, “for, no-body exposes wares that are appropriated.” But in the same breath the author sought to deny the commercial metaphor just created; women should avoid low-cut clothing because “none but direct traders in beauty . . . ever expose more than the fore-part of the neck, and that also with a modest discretion.” To make the commodification of female beauty explicit would be to reduce a woman seeking marriage to the level of a prostitute, a “direct trader in beauty.” 67 The same author also revealed the ultimate, though usually unstated, rationale for female chastity, claiming “that nothing besides chastity, with its collateral attendants, truth, fidelity, and constancy, gives the man a property in the person he loves.”68 A woman’s modesty was her natural form of protection for her most valuable property, her chastity; but her chastity, like her modesty, was valuable only because ultimately it belonged to a man.

Marriage In 1731, a fictional “petition from several batchelors” complained that women were refusing to marry men of modest means because they could not offer large enough jointures. The bachelors demanded a series of reforms: that the women may not by any publick act be allow’d to court, since they have made so indiscreet a use of the toleration for some time past allow’d them; that

65

James Bland, An Essay in Praise of Women: or, A Looking-Glass for Ladies to See their Perfections In (London: Printed for the author, 1733), p. 157. Bland takes the property metaphor to its logical conclusion when he describes the horror of men who “tak[e] People’s Wives from them, either by Compulsion, Consent, or Delusion”; the offense is against not the woman but her husband, although the passage is intended as a moral warning to women (p. 78). 66 Gentleman’s Magazine 2 (September 1732): 964–5, from Universal Spectator 207 (23 September). 67 Young Gentleman and Lady Instructed, pp. 160–1. 68 ibid., p. 253 (italics added). 35

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pin-money, and separate maintenance be utterly abolish’d; that quadrille tables be put down; that sumptuary laws be made to reduce the women to a decent habit, and reasonable expences; . . . [and] that a stop be put to the ruinous practice of setting up a coach immediately upon marrying, unless by people of large estates.69

Although humorous, the petition reveals a series of related anxieties about female sexual aggression, financial independence, and fashion. It reflects a growing sense among many eighteenth-century observers that they were witnessing the deterioration of marriage into a business contract. Rather than being respected as an institution ordained by God and necessary to social stability, the argument went, marriage was an object of mockery, used only as a cynical means of increasing wealth. Brides were being bought and sold with no regard for their future happiness or compatibility with their husbands, and, in return, they were wasting their husbands’ estates in lives of luxurious extravagance. Most famously, perhaps, this notion was exploited in William Hogarth’s series Marriage à la Mode (1745), its very title embodying the idea that mercenary marriage was a new fashion. Few could miss the lesson of a visual tale that began with the sale of an heiress for a title and ended with disease, murder, and suicide. The popularity of Hogarth’s work and the widespread publication of similar critiques, however, call into question the existence of any trend toward mercenary marriage at all. And ironically, the moment when many contemporaries perceived an overwhelming movement toward mercenary marriages is the same one in which many modern historians have seen the rise of the loving, egalitarian family.70 Yet attempts to create a grand narrative of romantic love have been problematic. Even the greatest exponent of this narrative, Lawrence Stone, recently argued that “in the period between about 1680 and 1710, the country, both high and low, seems to have lost its moral moorings,” citing legal and literary “evidence of an abnormally cynical, mercenary, and predatory ruthlessness about human relationships.”71 Stone does not address how this apparent moment of moral decay fits into his larger, and better-known, narrative of progress toward the egalitarian family. Clearly, however, it is difficult to trace continuous improvement in the condition of early modern marriages.

69

Gentleman’s Magazine 1 (April 1731): 146, from Universal Spectator 127 (3 April). Most famous is Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (New York: Harper and Row, 1977). For similar arguments, with somewhat different chronologies, see Judith Schneid Lewis, In the Family Way: Childbearing in the British Aristocracy, 1760–1860 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986); Randolph Trumbach, The Rise of the Egalitarian Family: Aristocratic Kinship and Domestic Relations in Eighteenth-Century England (New York: Academic Press, 1978). 71 Lawrence Stone, Broken Lives: Separation and Divorce in England 1660–1857 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 27–8. See also Lawrence Stone, Uncertain Unions: Marriage in England 1660–1753 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 12–13, 31–2. 70

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Was there either a crisis in marriage or a trend toward more affective partnerships in the early eighteenth century? Marriage portions went up throughout the early modern period, a phenomenon recognized at the time and supported by more recent scholarship.72 The growing use and complexity of marriage settlements meant that among the elite, at least, the signing of a marriage contract looked increasingly like the signing of a business contract. The use of settlements to preserve women’s separate property, moreover, explicitly drew attention to the financial implications of marriage.73 Yet marriage had long been used by the elite to cement political or social bonds and to enhance family wealth. If the legal and financial complexities of marriage were growing during the early eighteenth century, it is nonetheless difficult to argue that there was a qualitative change in the reasons behind marriage. Many recent studies confirm the wide variety of motives for marriage and of relationships within marriage throughout the early modern period; they emphasize that love was always accepted as an important factor in choosing a spouse.74 Other work, in contrast, suggests that marriage among the elite continued to reflect patriarchal and economic motives.75 These 72

R. B. Outhwaite, “Marriage as Business: Opinions on the Rise in Aristocratic Bridal Portions in Early Modern England,” in Business Life and Public Policy, ed. N. McKendrick and R. B. Outhwaite (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 21–37; J. P. Cooper, “Patterns of Inheritance and Settlement by Great Landowners from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries,” in Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200–1800, ed. Jack Goody, Joan Thirsk, and E. P. Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 222. 73 Amy Louise Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 1993), chs. 6–8; Susan Staves, Married Women’s Separate Property in England, 1660–1833 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990); Lloyd Bonfield, Marriage Settlements 1601–1740: The Adoption of the Strict Settlement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Susan Moller Okin, “Patriarchy and Married Women’s Property in England: Questions on Some Current Views,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 17 (1983): 121–38. 74 See among many others, Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), ch. 2; Alan Macfarlane, Marriage and Love in England: Modes of Reproduction, 1300–1840 (New York: Blackwell, 1986); Ralph Houlbrooke, The English Family, 1450–1700 (London: Longman, 1984); Keith Wrightson, English Society, 1580–1680 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1982), pp. 78–81. For loving seventeenth-century couples, see, e.g., Vivienne Larminie, Wealth, Kinship and Culture: The Seventeenth-Century Newdigates of Arbury and Their World (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Royal Historical Society/Boydell Press, 1995); Lois Schwoerer, Lady Rachel Russell: “One of the Best of Women” (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988); Alan Macfarlane, The Family Life of Ralph Josselin: A SeventeenthCentury Clergyman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). 75 David Lemmings, “Marriage and the Law in the Eighteenth Century: Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753,” Historical Journal 39 (1996): 339–60; Paul Langford, Public Life and the Propertied Englishman, 1689–1798 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 6–7; Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England 1727–1783 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 114–15. 37

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studies thus call into question both Stone’s model of the improvement of marriage toward the companionate ideal and the opposite notion of a crisis in marriage in the early eighteenth century. Yet many social commentators agreed that marriage was indeed in crisis. Like the petitioning bachelors, they also agreed on where to place the blame: the problem lay in the unreasonable demands made by fashionable women. This view equated fashionable life with female corruption, seeing the decline of marriage as a key symptom of such corruption. As one critic complained: ’Tis unreasonable to expect those who have been educated according to the fashionable Methods of the Age, and imbib’d Principals of Gallantry with their Mothers Milk, should afterwards recede from the same for the stricter Rules of a more austere Behaviour . . . the oeconomical Cares of a Houshold Concern, or a painful Industry, and sedulous Endeavour to render the Affairs of the nuptial State easy and agreeable.76

In response to this perceived crisis, didactic writers began placing enormous emphasis on marriage. Choosing a husband was a topic that had received relatively little consideration in conduct books of the seventeenth century: Richard Brathwait, for instance, touched only briefly on the question of choosing a husband and contented himself with insisting that women should accept their subordination to their husbands without complaint, in the name of good household order.77 Allestree’s Ladies Calling offered the first major discussion of the importance of choosing a husband, coupling the need to obey parental authority with an acceptance of the woman’s veto where she did not love the prospective spouse.78 Later conduct authors took up Allestree’s basic premise of combining love and parental approval and elaborated on it, making marriage the centerpiece of their manuals and adding a focus on the danger of mercenary considerations that was absent from The Ladies Calling. In such conduct books and across a variety of other genres, writers turned to what Susan Moller Okin has termed the “sentimental family” as the institution that answered women’s unique, “natural” need for love and domestic life; marriage in this view was both a partnership between man and woman, and the institution embodying feminine difference.79 Above all, matrimony was every woman’s natural destiny. “I presume it will not be thought any Affront to suppose, that the chief Aim and leading Passion of every young Lady in Great Britain is to get

76

Applebee’s Original Weekly Journal (11 January 1729). Brathwait, English Gentlewoman, pp. 292, 344–8. He did, however, assume that his reader would marry a man she loved. 78 Allestree, Ladies Calling, pp. 162–6. 79 Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination, pp. 395–400; Susan Moller Okin, “Women and the Making of the Sentimental Family,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 11 (1981): 65–88, especially pp. 65, 73–4. 77

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herself a good Husband,” announced one writer with disarming frankness, “For, unless we are mightily mistaken in our Notions of your Sex, this must be true.”80 In order for marriage to function as an effective institution for defining femininity, women had to be persuaded that matrimony was both a natural and a pleasurable state for them – hence the didactic authors’ insistence that women marry for love, and their vehement attacks on mercenary or coerced marriages, which they presented as violations of the natural order. Women were reminded that they had to have the advice and approval of their parents in their choice of spouse; women’s natural dependence required this. But whereas Allestree had devoted approximately equal space to parental approval and to love, eighteenth-century conduct writers spent much more time extolling love in marriage. Similarly, the periodicals of the first half of the eighteenth century were filled with essays, poems, and correspondence deploring parental tyranny and mercenary matches, while praising the benefits of loving marriages.81 It was common to argue that marriage for money was a form of prostitution, turning a woman into a commodity. “How is she, who to support herself in pressing Want gives up her Person to the first that will pay for it, more criminal than she, who with an easy Fortune gives up herself to the Man she secretly detests, for the sake of enjoying more than she wants?” asked one writer, supposedly in response to a woman considering such a marriage. “Avarus will carry you to his House as his Purchase: For he must be sensible he can have no Property in you but what he has pay’d for.”82 But if marriage for money was the problem, marriage for love was the solution. Concern about material gain was inappropriate for women; instead, they were told, “Th’ important Business of your Life is Love.”83 John Essex described “Fidelity and Love to their Husbands” as chief among “the shining Qualities and Atchievements of Womankind.”84 To understand this emphasis on love, however, we must understand its meaning in its historical context and thus avoid the anachronistic assumptions behind arguments about the improvements to women’s lives supposedly brought on by the companionate marriage.85 The conduct book

80

An Essay on Modern Gallantry. Address’d to Men of Honour, Men of Pleasure, and Men of Sense. With a Seasonable Admonition to the Young Ladies of Great Britain (London: M. Cooper, (1750?)), pp. 44–5. 81 See, e.g., Spectator Nos. 149 (21 August 1711), 199 (18 October 1711), 268 (7 January 1712), 437 (22 July 1712), 511 (16 October 1712). From the 1730s on, the Gentleman’s Magazine contains innumerable examples. It provides a particularly useful source because in its first decades it was a compendium of summaries and transcriptions of material taken from other periodicals. See also Maurer, Proposing Men, pp. 221–2. 82 Gentleman’s Magazine 2 (July 1732): 834, from Universal Spectator 195 (1 July). 83 The Bee: or, Universal Weekly Pamphlet 6 (10–17 March 1733). 84 Essex, Young Ladies Conduct, p. 8. 85 This is the assumption behind Stone, Family, Sex and Marriage. 39

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authors’ insistence on love did not imply a change in views about the power relations within marriage. Legal and religious theorists had long drawn a distinction between the subordination of a wife to her husband and the power of a master over a slave, for example.86 But by insisting on the primacy of love in marriage, eighteenth-century conduct writers changed the language of subordination. Love in this view was recognizable not so much as an internal, emotional state, but through the conditions of marriage it created – conditions in which both partners understood and accepted their complementary roles.87 Women were told that they had to love the man they married in order to obey him; they would be sure that they did indeed love him, conversely, by their willingness to obey him. Marriage without love was therefore wrong because it turned this innately benevolent hierarchy into a burden. “Where there is Love, the Duties of a Wife are easy; where Interest is the only Motive they are little better than Slavery,” wrote one essayist.88 When one “Mrs. Rulewell” wrote in to the Prompter complaining that a column on marriage had inspired her previously submissive husband to demand her obedience, the editor replied, “I am sorry Mrs Rulewell thinks a Wife can have better Notions than those imply’d by Honour and Obey, which are still to be built upon the Basis of Reason.” But he was confident that, since she clearly loved her husband, she would soon be content to be governed by him.89 John Essex reminded his readers that one of the “Laws of Marriage” was for wives to obey. He admitted that this might seem “harsh and severe” until women considered that their husbands were under an even greater obligation to honor, respect, and care for them: “Can any Word be more grateful to your Ears, than Obedience to the Man you Love, when the Consequence of that Obedience is the Adoration of your selves?”90 Love was essential in order to make women accept the natural order of marriage, which demanded their obedience to their husbands. Obedience was woman’s part of the marriage contract, a vow made voluntarily that she could not break.91 86 Sarah Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, 1550–1720 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), p. 132; Margaret R. Sommerville, Sex and Subjection: Attitudes to Women in Early-Modern Society (New York: Arnold, 1995), pp. 79–83. 87 This conception of love thus has both similarities to and differences from today’s notion of romantic love, which privileges the internal emotional aspects and which stresses the individual’s state of mind rather than the external results of a relationship between two people. 88 Gentleman’s Magazine 2 (May 1732): 752, from Universal Spectator 182 (20 May). 89 Gentleman’s Magazine 5 (January 1735): 15, from Prompter 15. Gentleman’s Magazine 5 (January 1735): 16, from Prompter 19. 90 Essex, Young Ladies Conduct, pp. 70–1. 91 Linda Pollock, “Review Article: ‘An Action Like a Strategem’: Courtship and Marriage from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century,” Historical Journal 30 (1987): 492. It is important to keep in mind that the idea of marriage as a contract does not imply equality between the contracting parties; the contract between master and servant or apprentice provided an obvious and compelling example of such inequality.

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Wives thus had to obey their husbands, and could only obey where there was love. Eighteenth-century social critics sealed their argument, finally, by insisting that obedience was not merely necessary but also “natural.” If they believed that they were fighting a desperate battle against the fashionable turn toward mercenary marriages, they could also argue that love – and therefore obedience – was the only natural way to make a marriage. In a fictional dialogue about the roles of spouses, the authorial voice argued: That the man should have the superiority, appears evidently to be the intention of nature. And whatever is most conformable to nature, must undoubtedly be most conducive to happiness. I therefore infer, that it is more for the woman’s happiness, as well as the man’s, that he should preserve that authority which nature hath given him, than otherwise.92

Since wifely submission was natural, wifely domination in marriage was a form of usurpation that could only lead to unhappiness. “The Government of the Wife is an Inversion of Nature,” advised one writer, “and whatever is not natural, never was nor never will be agreeable.”93 Any form of independence in a wife threatened this natural subordination – hence the frequent attacks on pin money, which was seen as threatening the proper balance of power between husband and wife by giving women the wherewithal to defy their spouses. The battle for romantic love against mercenary marriage was thus very much bound up in the battle to retain male authority within marriage. The Spectator complained as early as 1712 “that the supplying a Man’s Wife with Pin-money, is furnishing her with Arms against himself ”: Separate Purses, between Man and Wife, are, in my Opinion, as unnatural as separate Beds. A Marriage cannot be happy, where the Pleasures, Inclinations and Interests of both Parties are not the same. There is no greater Incitement to Love in the Mind of Man, than the Sense of a Person’s depending upon him for her Ease and Happiness; as a Woman uses all her Endeavours to please the Person whom she looks upon as her Honour, her Comfort, and her Support.94

This argument was taken up by other writers, who worried that modern fashionable society, by giving greater economic liberty to women, had led 92

A Dialogue Concerning the Subjection of Women to Their Husbands . . . In Which is Interspersed, Some Observations on Courtship, For the Use of the Batchelors (London: John Wilkie, 1765), p. 15. 93 F. L., Esq. [pseud.], The Virgin’s Nosegay, or, The Duties of Christian Virgins . . . To which is added, Advice to a new married Lady (London: M. Cooper, 1744), pp. 185–6. This is one of the few passages from the Advice that is not lifted directly from Swift’s Letter to a Very Young Lady on her Marriage. 94 Spectator 295 (7 February 1712) 3: 52–3; later quoted in Young Gentleman and Lady Instructed, 2: 318–19. For other examples from the Spectator, see Maurer, Proposing Men, pp. 190–93. 41

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men to abdicate their natural authority and thus their masculinity: “we have refined ourselves into a ridiculous degree of effeminacy.”95 To the complaint that “Women are often kiss’d or kick’d out of those previous Settlements,” one essayist simply asserted that “it shews the Weakness of the Sex, and how improper it is they should be trusted with the Interests of others, who cannot maintain their own.” 96 Despite the partnership assumed in the ideal of married love, then, these authors continued to insist that nature determined female submission. Modern marriages threatened the natural gender order, allowing women to usurp power and making men effeminate. Obedience was natural, and women who could not cheerfully accept their natural submission to their husbands were, therefore, monstrous and unnatural. But didactic writers were careful to assure their female readers that this obedience would never be a burden because women had the power to influence their husbands through moral suasion. The best way for a woman to achieve influence, they said, was through abject submission; willing obedience would in reality give a woman more true power than any attempt to seize authority from her husband. “Never forfeit the Tenderness of your Sex,” urged Wetenhall Wilkes, “The engaging Softness of a Wife, when prudently manag’d, subdues all the natural and legal Authority of any reasonable Man. Her looks have more Power than his Laws.”97 Thomas Marriott assured his readers that by “debasing” herself a wife could actually rule her husband: She, by Compliance, can her Ruler sway; Strong, without Strength, she triumphs o’er the Heart, What Nature gives not, she acquires by Art; Preeminence, herself debasing, gains, By yielding conquers, and by serving reigns; Her soft Endearments, her fierce master tame.98

Because these writers assumed a marriage for love as well as superior intelligence in the husband, they could further assume that he would be just in his exercise of power. Women were reminded that a good husband would, “by knowing how to be a master . . . not let his wife feel the weight of it . . . she will never want power, though she will seldom care to use it.”99 In fact, some felt obliged to warn a wife not to abuse her power over her loving husband by taking advantage of his affection to dominate him.100 It is, 95

Dialogue Concerning the Subjection of Women, pp. 24–5. Gentleman’s Magazine 6 (November 1736): 649–50, from Weekly Miscellany 300. This was a response to the pamphlet The Hardships of English Laws relating to Wives. 97 Wilkes, Letter of Genteel and Moral Advice, p. 117. 98 Thomas Marriott, Female Conduct: Being an Essay on the Art of Pleasing. To be practised by the Fair Sex, Before, and After Marriage. A Poem, in Two Books (London: W. Owen, 1759), p. 18. 99 Young Gentleman and Lady Instructed, 2: 331–2. 100 ibid., 2: 343–4. 96

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of course, perfectly possible that in many instances women could indeed influence their husbands through this sort of moral suasion. But by insisting that only through the absolute authority of the husband could a wife achieve any form of power, these authors effectively precluded a more equitable distribution of authority in the marriage. The force of the texts was geared entirely toward preventing women from seeking to challenge this fundamental hierarchy. What would happen to a woman whose husband abused his power? Halifax’s Lady’s New Year’s Gift of 1688 had forthrightly addressed the possibility of a bad husband. Halifax admitted that this could be a nightmare for a wife, but said that, since she had no escape, she should learn to cope. Later writers devoted much less space to this possibility than to the glories of wifely submission, and they transformed the failings of a bad husband into a test of true womanhood for his unfortunate spouse. Even if a husband were unfaithful or abusive, there was no excuse for a wife to defy his authority. “Be deaf tho’ you hear, and be blind tho’ you see!” recommended one poem of “Seasonable Advice to a New-married Lady.”101 Instead, a good woman could reclaim her husband by carefully examining her own conduct to see if she had committed some fault, and then behaving so well – that is, submissively – that he would come to regret his infidelity.102 John Essex portrayed a bad husband as the ultimate opportunity for a woman to demonstrate her virtue through her continuing love and respect for him. Even if her husband were a drunkard or a debauched adulterer, she should continue to sleep with him, since the risks she would run were outweighed by the opportunities she would have to reform him through her kind behavior. Essex’s refusal to discuss what those risks were, of course, allowed him to avoid facing the very real dangers of disease or violence that a wife could encounter in making such a choice.103 The ideal was also dramatized in several eighteenth-century plays, such as Colley Cibber’s popular Careless Husband; the philandering protagonist finally learns to appreciate his wife when he discovers she has known all along of his infidelity but has not complained.104 John Hill even argued that a

101

Midwife Vol. 1, No. 2 (1751). J. Trotti de la Chétardie, A Letter to a Young Lady of Distinction at the Court of France. Containing Remarks on Religion, Morality, Politeness, Love, Gallantry, &c. The Whole forming a Compleat System of Genteel and Moral Advice to the Fair Sex. . . . Translated from the French (first published 1685; London: J. Robinson, 1745), pp. 21–2; A Dialogue Between Two Young Ladies Lately Married, Concerning Management of Husbands (London: (n.p.), 1696), p. 11 and passim; Richardson, Familiar Letters, pp. 61–4; Essex, Young Ladies Conduct, pp. 71–3. 103 Essex, Young Ladies Conduct, pp. 67–9, 99. 104 Laura Brown, English Dramatic Form, 1660–1760: An Essay in Generic History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), p. 139. Colley Cibber, The Careless Husband (1704), in Colley Cibber: Three Sentimental Comedies, ed. Maureen Sullivan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), pp. 85–173. 102

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woman could resist her husband only if she worried that her life or that of her “unborn Posterity” was in danger. In this case, he urged, she must turn to a trusted relative for guidance and have the relative confront her husband, to show that she only reluctantly withheld her duty of obedience.105 Even in a situation where a wife had no choice but in practice to oppose her husband, it was essential to maintain the appearance of submissiveness.

Praise of femininity Early eighteenth-century social commentators increasingly portrayed women as naturally modest, chaste, and obedient, attacking any woman who failed to live up to these ideals as unnatural, even monstrous. It may seem unlikely, to modern eyes, that any woman could find such values attractive. Yet eighteenth-century writers repeatedly contrasted themselves favorably with their predecessors. They presented themselves as friends of women, enlightened in comparison to those who had come before them. Although the basic prescriptions for female behavior – such as chastity and devotion to home and family – were not new, these authors argued that they, unlike earlier writers, appreciated women’s virtue and abilities. We have already seen the common suggestion that accepting subordination to one’s husband permitted the exercise of true power over him through moral suasion. More than that, however, the language of natural femininity opened the way for a flood of adulation.106 The Spectator glorified “that Sex, which was created to refine the Joys, and soften the Cares of Humanity.”107 “Pity, Compassion and Benevolence, with all the Class of the tender and more refined Passions, seem to be the peculiar Property of the Fair,” gushed another work, “and would make one think they were appointed Stewards and Almoners for Heaven, to dispense the Blessings of its Providence to the Creation.”108 Writers also frequently emphasized the reforming powers of female conversation. According to Thomas Marriott, ladies could eliminate vice from society simply by showing men that they did not find it attractive.109 Women were thus simultaneously defined as completely different from men and glorified for that difference. The ultimate effect was to reinforce patriarchy, but

105

John Hill, The Conduct of a Married Life: Laid down in a Series of Letters, Written by the Honourable Juliana-Susannah Seymour, to a Young Lady, her Relation, Lately Married, 2nd ed. (first published 1753; London: R. Baldwin, 1754), pp. 225–6. 106 Childs, “Prescriptions for Manners,” pp. 283–6; Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination, pp. 396–400; LeGates, “Cult of Womanhood.” 107 Spectator 33 (7 April 1711), 1: 140. 108 L’Abbé d’Ancourt, The Lady’s Preceptor, or, A Letter to a Young Lady of Distinction upon Politeness (London: J. Watts, 1743), p. 68. The ESTC notes that there is no known French original of this work. 109 Marriott, Female Conduct, pp. xxvii–xxviii. 44

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the methods of maintaining women’s subordination shifted dramatically away from earlier views that had stressed the inferior and sinful nature of women. Such writers were not simply being disingenuous. Exponents of “natural” feminine behavior did offer a view of women that in many ways carried real appeal for women.110 One of the most obvious aspects of this appeal lay in their opinions on female education. The seemingly reactionary authors of didactic material held in common with proto-feminists of the period a view that women should not merely be educated in ornamental accomplishments.111 Some writers, like Jonathan Swift, did continue to insist that women could never attain even the learning “of a School-boy.”112 But this view was passing. Praise of female learning, as long as it did not result in ostentatious display or pedantry, was common. The Spectator, which prided itself on its enlightened attitude toward women’s intellect, ran an ongoing discussion about women’s education that stressed women’s intellectual capabilities.113 Other published debates on the same issue yielded the same results.114 Some authors went so far as to suggest that women were more suited to learning than men because they had more leisure time, more spontaneous natures, or “because they have that natural gift of speech in greater perfection than men.”115 Admittedly this emphasis on education often came in the context of training women to be good wives and mothers, but the stress on female abilities should not be underestimated. James Bland blamed attempts to keep women from education on “an ill Custom,” and insisted that most learning could only improve women, who had “the same rational Souls” as men.116 Other authors suggested that if more women were educated they would spend less time in frivolous pursuits; the products of their pen, women were assured, could be just as alluring as those of the

110 See Terry Lovell, “Subjective Powers? Consumption, the Reading Public, and Domestic Woman in Early Eighteenth-Century England,” in The Consumption of Culture, 1600–1800: Image, Object, Text, ed. Ann Bermingham and John Brewer (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 37, on the “power or pleasure” available to women within the confines of femininity; she sees the class interests engaged here as primarily “bourgeois.” 111 Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination, pp. 365–6, 375, 398; Alice Browne, The Eighteenth Century Feminist Mind (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987); Ruth Perry, The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986); Hilda Smith, Reason’s Disciples (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982). 112 Jonathan Swift, A Letter to a Very Young Lady on her Marriage, in Miscellanies in Prose and Verse. The Second Volume (London: Benjamin Motte, 1727), pp. 332–3. 113 See, e.g., Spectator 4 (5 March 1711); Spectator 37 (12 April 1711); Spectator 53 (1 May 1711); Spectator 79 (31 May 1711); Spectator 92 (15 June 1711); Spectator 95 (19 June 1711); Spectator 242 (7 December 1711); Spectator 278 (18 January 1712). 114 See, e.g., Weekly Oracle, p. 243. 115 Young Gentleman and Lady Instructed, 1: 206. 116 Bland, Essay in Praise of Women, pp. 202–3.

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needle.117 Thomas Marriott recommended that his readers try science, even that they use telescopes and microscopes.118 Like others, he saw this as a way for women to learn to appreciate God as creator and a way to distract them from novel-reading, but he did, at least, suggest that these were not areas entirely beyond women’s ability. Simply to dismiss such advice because of its obvious patriarchal agenda is to fail to recognize its potential attraction for women. Nor was education the only area in which these ideas might appeal. Although women were told that they did not belong in areas of public influence and that they had to remain subservient to their husbands, they were also reminded that they exercised tremendous power within the realm of home and family. As one poem put it, a young wife’s “domestic Charge” was “A Province, like her Virtues, fair and large.” “Tell her,” the poem continued, that to a Mansion she is come, More truly hers, than her own native Home. How, but a Subject there she did appear, A Regent now, and in her Palace here.119

The Ladies Complete Letter-Writer included among its examples a letter from a woman to her female friend insisting that women were better suited than men, by both temperament and upbringing, to govern the household. She complained about male attempts to take away this “Dominion.”120 Domestic authority was thus presented as the reward for wifely obedience. The kind of power promised to women reveals in the clearest terms the class assumptions of the social critics, despite their universalizing language of “natural” womanhood. Female power in the household was, above all, power over servants. Although women were told that they had to be able housewives, these instructions were couched in terms of management of servants, not performance of domestic labor.121 John Essex argued that a woman’s virtue was demonstrated through the supervision of those below her: “Her Prudence is shewn in the regular Government of her Family, and taking Care that every Servant of her House be imploy’d in Business suitable to their several Stations and Capacities.” A woman’s government of her

117

See Marriott, Female Conduct, p. xxii. Richardson’s Clarissa voices the same sentiment: cited in Barker-Benfield, Culture of Sensibility, p. 170. 118 Marriott, Female Conduct, p. 194. 119 N. Tate, “The Characters of an Accomplish’d Virgin, Wife, and Widow,” in The Agreeable Companion; or, an Universal Medley of Wit and Good-Humour (London: W. Bickerton, 1745), pp. 285–6. 120 The Ladies Complete Letter-Writer; Teaching the Art of Inditing Letters on Every Subject That Can Call for Their Attention, as Daughters, Wives, Mothers, Relations, Friends, or Acquaintance (London: Printed for the editor, 1765), pp. 251–2. 121 See Hill, Conduct of Married Life, p. 268; Bland, Essay in Praise of Women, p. 52. 46

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household was comparable to a man’s government of the state; each had his or her proper area of action.122 Essex went on to suggest that a woman should have “Knowledge of the Kitchen, Dairy, and Confectionary,” not because she should perform such tasks herself but so that she could ensure that the servants did their jobs properly and efficiently.123 An “Accomplish’d Virgin” in another text demonstrated her household skills by “Dissembling Fruits in Wax” and doing embroidery – hardly the height of practicality.124 James Bland went even further, listing as a married lady’s “industry” her endurance of menstruation and childbirth, and rhetorically asking, “Would it be Frugality to spin and make Cloth when, notwithstanding the Labour, it is to be bought cheaper than any Housewife can make it, would it not be mispending [sic] a Lady’s Time, to be ever and anon carding, spinning, knitting, quilting, &c. when there are so many industrious Women, whose Livelihoods solely depend upon such Employments?”125 The system of feminine weakness was thus sustained by an appeal to the class interests of the elite.

Conclusion By the 1730s, ideas about female nature had come to structure contemporary discussions of feminine behavior. Chastity was, as always, a primary concern, but commentators now insisted that it was a natural product of women’s innate modesty. This attitude marked a shift from earlier views of women as sexual predators, a shift that enabled didactic writers to portray themselves as women’s strongest supporters. Their prescriptions established, in the most comprehensive and systematic way possible, the ideals of feminine behavior that dominated English society in the early eighteenth century. Social commentators urged women to follow the dictates of their feminine nature as they entered marriage, choosing a man whom they loved and thus could obey cheerfully. If the ideology of the sentimental marriage offered a wife the possibility of power, it was only on the condition of her “debasing” herself, as Thomas Marriott tellingly put it. Far from creating a partnership of equality, this ideology reinforced patriarchal notions of wifely subordination. But instead of portraying marriage as an act of discipline and sacrifice on the part of wives, eighteenth-century writers began, through the language of natural femininity, to portray this as the only state that could provide true happiness for women. Transforming subjection itself into a benefit, they 122

Essex, Young Ladies Conduct, p. xxxiv. There is a significant contrast here between this notion of women and men “governing” different spheres, and the older notion of an analogy between family and state in which individual men governed their households just as the king governed the state. 123 Essex, Young Ladies Conduct, p. 88. 124 Tate, “Characters,” pp. 283–4. 125 Bland, Essay in Praise of Women, p. 45. 47

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insisted that soft words and total obedience would give a wife power over her husband. Yet despite the apparent comprehensiveness and universality of the language of nature, there were crucial aspects of women’s lives that simply could not be discussed. By establishing loving, companionate marriages, in which wives submitted voluntarily and gratefully to their husbands, as the only natural state for an adult woman, didactic writers erased entire aspects of women’s existence, both positive and negative. The public authority vested in many women, single and married, was entirely ignored. Conversely, the nightmares of abusive husbands, marital breakdown, and divorce were equally invisible in these texts, mentioned only as something that happened to vaguely-defined other women, not the intended audience. The minute detail devoted in conduct books to many aspects of women’s behavior created a sense of practical guidance that masked the absence of any real help for women whose married lives were unhappy; the only salvation offered was through the reforming effects of virtuous wifely submission. Unregulated female sexuality was similarly written out of these works. And, of course, their implied readers never faced the need to work or the possibility of financial ruin, despite the very real financial precariousness of most women’s lives. The universalizing language of female nature disguised the absence of the vast majority of women from the pages of these manuals. A strict division between the ostensibly natural realms of femininity and masculinity did offer women areas of authority that depended on assumptions about their status and wealth. But social critics virulently attacked any attempts to institutionalize wifely independence, such as legal arrangements for separate property. Such attempts, they argued, were simply the product of modern fashionable society, artificial innovations that could only lead to misery. They offered instead the prospect for women to find true happiness in marriage through their love for their husbands and their knowledge that their unfashionable happiness was morally superior. In so doing, they also set the tone for a systematic critique of the activities and mores of fashionable society, which will be the subject of the next chapter.

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2

The Attack on Fashionable Society In return for accepting a life of domestic bliss in a sentimental marriage, women were promised the pleasures of love, education, and household power. At the same time, they were constantly reminded that modern, fashionable society was undermining those values, destroying loving families by encouraging mercenary matches where the only consideration was money. According to many writers, however, such marriages represented only one aspect of the myriad dangers posed by modern life. The strong connection drawn between feminine modesty and chastity meant that a wide range of activities could be presented as violating this natural modesty and thus associated with a threat to chastity. Through this connotative chain, didactic authors sought to deal with new forms of leisure and entertainment that developed in the eighteenth century, creating widespread anxiety about women’s crucial role in the new consumer society. The many fashionable activities attacked by these critics were seen to distract women from their natural domestic role and from their natural subservience to men. In response, didactic writers portrayed fashion and consumption as quintessentially feminine, yet also as threatening to feminine purity. A concern with leisure and fashion was not in itself new. Richard Brathwait, for instance, had inveighed against women’s attendance at plays and their slavish adherence to outlandish fashions in dress.1 Yet his criticism of these pastimes was based above all on their encouragement of sin, and such issues took up comparatively little room in his work. Other seventeenthcentury writers, even Allestree, also touched only briefly on the question of fashionable activities and women’s participation in them. But all this changed in the early eighteenth century. Beginning with the many issues of the Spectator devoted to such subjects, writers began dedicating reams of paper to attacks on a wide variety of fashionable activities, reacting to the tremendous changes in consumption and leisure patterns they saw around them. By 1740, discussions of the dangers posed by such activities had come to occupy as much as half of a typical conduct book, and to absorb the energies of myriad essayists and other social commentators.

1 Richard Brathwait, The English Gentleman and English Gentlewoman, Both in One Volume Couched, “3d ed.” (London: John Dawson, 1641), “To the Gentlewoman Reader” and pp. 272, 297.

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Fashionable dress Women’s love of dress was a target of didactic literature from its earliest origins. Two aspects of such criticism, however, were new in the eighteenth century. One was the sheer volume and stridency of such attacks; the other was the conviction that this slavish adherence to the latest modes was both natural to women and a grave threat to (natural) female chastity. A variety of changes in English society heightened anxieties about this issue. Over the long term, the decline of sumptuary laws meant that clothing as a symbol of rank was no longer strictly regulated. More immediately, by the early eighteenth century the expansion of a consumer society meant that growing numbers of women sought to follow fashionable trends in dress, thus making it even more difficult to distinguish “legitimate” from “illegitimate” display. It was a common complaint, for instance, that one could not tell the servant from the master.2 Better communications and the propulsion of commercialism meant that fashions were also changing more quickly and spreading faster; it was during the early eighteenth century that fashion, in the modern sense of frequent, irrational changes in dress style, came into being. Finally, the dominance of French fashions in clothing throughout the eighteenth century, at a time when the British and French were often at war, gave further ammunition to the didactic writers’ insistence that women’s slavery to fashion was a sign of British weakness and effeminacy.3 In response, didactic authors became increasingly virulent in their attacks on the extremes of female fashion, even as they insisted that women were virtually powerless before its allures. “F.L.,” the author of The Virgin’s Nosegay, expressed the common opinion when he remarked, “As Dress is claim’d by the Sex as their peculiar Province, most Women imagine they have a Right to indulge their Fancy, without Restriction, in whatever regards Apparel: But no Notion [is] more erroneous, none more dangerous, in the Virgin State particularly.”4 Young ladies should be especially careful to avoid the vice of vanity, warned John Essex, since their natural love of pleasing inevitably led them to place too much importance on dress and fashion.5

2

See G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 173–5. 3 On the dominance of French fashion, see Aileen Ribeiro, Dress in Eighteenth-Century Europe, 1715–1789 (London: B. T. Batsford Ltd., 1984); Anne Buck, Dress in EighteenthCentury England (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1979). On the impact of war with France on the shape of British identity, see Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). 4 “F. L.,” The Virgin’s Nosegay, or, The Duties of Christian Virgins . . . To which is added, Advice to a new married Lady (London: M. Cooper, 1744), p. 67. 5 John Essex, The Young Ladies Conduct: Or, Rules for Education, Under Several Heads; With Instructions Upon Dress, Both Before and After Marriage. And Advice to Young Wives (London: John Brotherton, 1722), pp. xi–xii, xv. 50

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In order to deal with the problem posed by women’s “natural” love of dress and appearance, didactic authors were quick to emphasize that dress in itself was not a problem as long as women only complied with fashion in moderation, as befitted their social station.6 Earlier writers, like Richard Brathwait, had made similar arguments about dressing in accordance with one’s rank. But while Brathwait acknowledged dress to be a significant social symbol, eighteenth-century commentators emphasized that conformity was acceptable because it was such an insignificant issue. At the same time, they used class interests to bolster their own position, appealing to elite fears about the lower orders usurping the outward marks of status. One writer, for instance, argued for the enforcement of sumptuary laws and a heavy tax on luxury items, which would apply to women as well as men but would make allowances “for the Gaiety of the Sex.”7 “F.L.” finished his criticism of feminine love of fashion by explaining that women should simply dress according to their rank and keep in mind that nothing was more attractive in a woman than modesty and discretion. But instead of following his sound advice, he complained, women continued to seek expensive apparel, driving their families as well as their own reputations to ruin.8 “F.L.” expressed a common fear that this natural female love of fashion would lead to dangerous excesses. John Essex warned his female readers that not only did high fashion repel men of sense, but “there is nothing brings a young LADY’s Virtue sooner in Question, than too fond a Complyance with the Extravagant Modes of the World.”9 Sometimes this concern was linked to specific fashions, such as déshabillé (often called “undress”). “The Negligence of loose Attire,” intoned Wetenhall Wilkes, “May oft invite to loose Desire.”10 Another author satirically compared modern English women with their “Pict” ancestors; just as the ancient Picts covered their naked bodies with paint, so modern women used more and more “paint” (i.e. makeup) even as they wore less and less clothing.11 Hoop skirts were a frequent target of 6

See, e.g., L’Abbé d’Ancourt, The Lady’s Preceptor, or, A Letter to a Young Lady of Distinction upon Politeness (London: J. Watts, 1743), pp. 63–4; An Essay on Modern Gallantry. Address’d to Men of Honour, Men of Pleasure, and Men of Sense. With a Seasonable Admonition to the Young Ladies of Great Britain (London: M. Cooper, (1750?)) pp. 49–50; Wetenhall Wilkes, A Letter of Genteel and Moral Advice to a Young Lady. In Which is Digested into a New and Familiar Method, a System of Rules and Informations, to Qualify the Fair Sex to be Useful and Happy in Every State (Dublin: E. Jones, 1740), pp. 74–5; and the citations given in F. A. Childs, “Prescriptions for Manners in English Courtesy Literature, 1690–1760, and Their Social Implications” (D. Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1984), pp. 244–5. 7 Gentleman’s Magazine 4 (January 1734): 13, from Weekly Miscellany 56. 8 F.L., Virgin’s Nosegay, pp. 67–8. See also Jonathan Swift, A Letter to a Very Young Lady on her Marriage, in Miscellanies in Prose and Verse. The Second Volume (London: Benjamin Motte, 1727), pp. 330–1. 9 Essex, Young Ladies Conduct, pp. 74–5. 10 Wilkes, Letter of Genteel and Moral Advice, p. 125. 11 Gray’s-Inn Journal 44 (18 August 1753). 51

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attack from their first appearance around 1710, since in their extreme size, inconvenience, and frequently shifting shapes they seemed to embody the worst of the feminine love of fashion. They both exposed a woman’s legs (and even more if she fell over) and concealed pregnancies, thus doubly inviting illicit sexual liaisons.12 “To see a Lady under a full Sail, with her Streamers spread, her Canvas crowded, that may be overshot by the least Accident, may expose Innocence, and wound Modesty it self,” complained the Entertainer in 1718, in a metaphor rich with innuendo.13 Behind attacks like this lay male anxieties about controlling female sexuality: a desire to create a woman who was both sexually attractive and available, but who was entirely controlled by a single, possessing male. Another fashion that was often singled out for condemnation in the 1740s was the masculine riding habit. Commentators argued that such clothes gave women an improper boldness that belied their innate modesty. Moreover, even though these outfits had tight-fitting bodices and full skirts, they were seen as making the sex of the wearer difficult to identify, creating confusion in the way men responded to her. Writers specifically related the wearing of masculine apparel to its effects on feminine attractiveness. Samuel Richardson reminded women that: as sure as any thing intrepid, free, and in a prudent degree bold, becomes a man; so whatever is soft, tender, and modest, renders your sex amiable. In this one instance we do not prefer our own likeness; and the less you resemble us, the more you are sure to charm: For a masculine woman is a character as little creditable as becoming.14

Gender ambiguity was seen as rampant among fashionable society, to the detriment of both sexes. “The Men . . . use Complexion, have a short nimble Trip; wear Breeches, have no Necklaces nor Ear-rings, or I should rank them Women,” said one author, while “The Females wear black Hats, walk with Clubs . . . love young Fellows, toast ’em, and jilt ’em; they rake, drink, game, wear Hoops or Farthingals, have no Swords nor Solitaires, or I should have call’d them pretty Fellows.”15 Social commentators insisted that fashion was a trivial, feminine interest and that women’s behavior as well as their appearance should be determined by their sex. But their concerns to reiterate that no woman was truly attractive or “creditable” in masculine apparel

12

Kimberly Chrisman, “Unhoop the Fair Sex: The Campaign Against the Hoop Petticoat in Eighteenth-Century England,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 30 (1996): 5–23. 13 The Entertainer: Containing Remarks upon Men, Manners, Religion and Policy, To which is Prefixt, a Dedication to the Most Famous University of Oxford 16 (19 February 1718). 14 Samuel Richardson, Familiar Letters on Important Occasions, ed. B. W. Downs (first published 1741; London: George Routledge & Sons, 1928), p. 114. See also the citations in Childs, “Prescriptions for Manners,” pp. 258–9. 15 Gentleman’s Magazine 4 (April 1734): 202, from Universal Spectator 289. 52

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reveal their anxieties about the instability of gender categories. Wearing such clothes posed the threat that women might try to usurp other male roles: “when a Woman has got all but the Breeches, she will struggle hard for them, too.”16 Masculine riding habits were especially vulnerable to criticism because they were considered a dangerous importation of French fashions and values to England. English writers feared that subjection to French fashion was just a short step away from political subjection. English apparel was supposedly marked by a natural simplicity and modesty – the very qualities most innately feminine. To adopt French apparel like the riding habits, said one writer, was to adopt the French character and to abandon native English modesty.17 English women were naturally more beautiful than French women, wrote another, but “our wrong-headed Female Bringers-up of Fashions, have struggled hard to introduce the Sac and Tete de mouton into wear, which entirely hides the greatest Beauty of the English Women.”18 Richard Steele worried that along with the clothes would come the French tendencies toward effeminacy in men as well as “assurance” in women.19 Thomas Marriott blamed everything from hoop skirts to hat-ribbons and printed visiting cards on the pernicious influence of the French, ending with a nationalist call to arms: “French Fashions, like your Ancestors, disdain;/To love of Piety, your Offspring train,/That Albion’s Arms may conquer France again.”20 Female subjection to foreign fashion was also a popular subject for satirical prints (see Figure 1). A 1707 print on the follies of the age mocked a fashionable woman’s attachment to French speech, “French Cold-Tea, to cure her of the Spleen,” and her French page and pet monkey.21 Women were both presented as the natural (because of their innate love of superficial appearances) victims of dangerous, unnatural (because foreign) influences, and blamed for succumbing to those influences. Women’s extravagances in fashion were often linked to other transgressions, as we have already seen with the association between overindulgence in fashion and sexual aggression. Many authors complained about women’s

16

Gentleman’s Magazine 1 (November 1731): 474, from London Journal 646. The Young Gentleman and Lady Instructed in Such Principles of Politeness, Prudence, and Virtue, as Will Lay a Sure Foundation for Gaining Respect, Esteem, and Satisfaction in This Life, and Eternal Happiness in a Future State . . ., 2 vols. (London: Edward Wicksteed, 1747), 2: 164–5. 18 Gentleman’s Magazine 5 (August 1735): 484, from Prompter 81. 19 Spectator 104 (29 June 1711), in Donald F. Bond, ed., The Spectator, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 1: 435. 20 Thomas Marriott, Female Conduct: Being an Essay on the Art of Pleasing. To be practised by the Fair Sex, Before, and After Marriage. A Poem, in Two Books (London: W. Owen, 1759), pp. 114–15, 118–19. 21 F. G. Stephens and M. D. George, eds., Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, 11 vols. (London: By order of the Trustees, 1870–1945), print no. 1475. 17

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Image not available

Figure 1 L. P. Boitard, The Imports of Great Britain from France. Reproduced by permission of the British Museum. The imports include French food, apparel, and servants. In the center, a “Woman of Quality” greets a “French Female-Dancer.” Another fashionable woman hires “a cringing French Abbe” to teach her children to speak with a French accent, while her English chaplain looks on in horror.

willingness to discuss politics and to use fashion to express their political views. Mr. Spectator’s famous satire on women who used beauty patches to display their party allegiance was picked up by many later writers.22 One imagined a “Female Parliament” with women debating politics in the only way that seemed possible: their fans portrayed battle scenes, while “The Patch no longer served as a mere Embellishment of Beauty, but carried with it a very expressive Energy, and denoted the Attachment of the Ladies to the Court or Country-party. Blue and Yellow Ribbons adorned the Head-dress, and hung out a Kind of Flag of Defiance to the opposite Party.”23 In fact, women did demonstrate their political allegiances in this manner; fashionable accessories such as fans could depict not only pastoral or mythological scenes but also political satires, for instance.24 But commentators also turned 22

Spectator 81 (2 June 1711), 1: 347. Gray’s-Inn Journal 83 (18 May 1754). See also, e.g., J[ohn] D[urant] B[reval], The Art of Dress. A Poem (London: R. Burleigh, 1717), p. 16. 24 The British Museum Prints and Drawings collection contains a design for a fan that compared Walpole to Cardinal Wolsey. Stephens and George, eds., Catalogue of Prints and Drawings, print no. 1925. 23

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to women’s supposedly natural interest in fashion to encourage women to express themselves in acceptable ways, rather than seeking to engage in party debates. “Would our English Ladies instead of sticking on a Patch against those of their own Country, show themselves so truly Publick-spirited as to Sacrifice every one her Necklace against the Common Enemy, what Decrees ought not to be made in favour of them?” asked the Spectator.25 The same author who jested about a female parliament suggested an acceptable alternative to direct discussion of the Jewish naturalization bill: I think it enough for the Ladies to have secretly resolved not to marry a Jew; and without engaging too deeply in the Controversy, the sparkling Crosses, which they wear upon their lovely Bosoms, will be a sufficient Indication of their Principles, and will at once reflect a Lustre upon the Whiteness of their Skins, and the Delicacy of their Sentiments.26

Once again, women’s association with fashion was trivialized and naturalized at the same time; they were incapable of engaging in political controversy because their minds were attached to trivial things, but it was only through such trivial things that they could participate in public matters at all.

Fashionable diversions In addition to worrying about women’s susceptibility to excesses in apparel, didactic authors criticized ladies for wasting far too much time in fashionable activities that brought them out into the public eye. These activities included attending masquerades, assemblies, or the theater; going to court; and even simply visiting or walking in public. Complaining about women abandoning their domestic duties to go gadding about was not in itself an innovation.27 What was new, however, was the intensity of the anxiety these activities caused and the sense that there was an overwhelming range of novel diversions available to which women were particularly susceptible. These anxieties were related to major transformations in English society in the early eighteenth century. For those who could afford them, new forms of leisure (especially commercial leisure) were developing while old ones were becoming widespread. The post-Restoration theater not only offered more plays, at more venues; to many people, it was also a site of licentiousness and immorality, encouraged by bawdy plots and the presence of actresses on the stage. At the same time there were entirely new forms of theatrical entertainment on offer, such as operas. This expansion of the theater was 25

Spectator 81 (2 June 1711), 1: 349. See also Gentleman’s Magazine 6 (November 1736): 649, from Weekly Miscellany 300. 26 Gray’s-Inn Journal 2 (28 October 1752). 27 For the seventeenth century, see Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England, 1500–1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 115. 55

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paralleled by the growth of other diversions. Ridottos, a form of commercial entertainment including music and dancing, were introduced by entrepreneurs in 1722.28 Assemblies, similar gatherings of people for conversation and gambling, also developed around 1720, both as semi-public events attended by ticket-holders, and in private houses, invariably hosted by women. The masquerade – again, offered both commercially and privately – was perhaps the most visible and controversial venture of this period. Finally, the public pleasure gardens of Ranelagh, Vauxhall, and Marylebone began to open from the 1740s and immediately developed a shady reputation for attracting thieves and other low-life (though this did not prevent the attendance of the elite).29 The intense anxiety caused by these new diversions, with their commercialism and their large crowds, spilled over into a more general anxiety about the growing presence of leisured women in public places. All of these activities were presented as threats to feminine modesty and chastity. Masquerades were particularly threatening to an ideology seeking to create an utterly transparent feminine identity. In a world in which a woman had to be constantly on her guard, masquerades, “where Faces are all so unlike their own” and where individuals were free to take on new identities, were particularly dangerous.30 One writer warned his readers: I am apt to think . . . that the ladies may possibly forget their own selves in such strange dresses, and do that in a personated, which may stain their real characters: the being in disguise takes away the usual checks and restraints of modesty. And consequently, the men do not blush to talk wantonly, nor the women to listen. The one as greedily sucks in the poison, as the other industriously infuses it. A young milk-maid, as an experienced writer remarks, may indulge herself in the innocent freedom of a green gown; and a shepherdess, without thinking any harm, may lie down with a shepherd on a mossy bank; and all this while the poor lady may be so far lost in the pleasing thoughts of her new romantick attire, and her lover’s soft endearing language, as never once to reflect, who she is, till the romance is compleated in her utter ruin. How easy is it for a young thing to be led aside on such occasions, when her spirits are fermented with sparkling champaine; her heart opened and dilated by the attractive gaiety of every thing about her; and her soul melted away by the soft airs of musick, and the gentle powers of motion?31 28

Oxford English Dictionary (OED). See Barker-Benfield, Culture of Sensibility, pp. 182–7; Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England 1727–1783 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 101; Terry Castle, Masquerade and Civilization: The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century English Culture and Fiction (London: Methuen, 1986); Roy Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), pp. 248, 250; Mark Girouard, Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), pp. 191–4. The OED’s first citation of “assembly” in this sense comes from 1718. 30 James Bland, An Essay in Praise of Women: or, A Looking-Glass for Ladies to See their Perfections In (London: Printed for the author, 1733), p. 158. 31 Young Gentleman and Lady Instructed, 2: 137–8. 29

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Just as dress and behavior were seen in ordinary circumstances to reflect moral character, so the deliberate transformation of dress could lead women to “forget their own selves,” and behave in character with the costumes they wore. Forgetting themselves also meant forgetting their natural modesty; the woman is described in highly sexual terms, her spirits “fermented,” “her heart open and dilated,” “her soul melted away.” “Utter ruin” inevitably followed.32 Even innocence was no protection for a woman in this situation, since she had no means of gauging the intentions of the men she encountered.33 Masquerades threatened women because they concealed the truth, allowing women to abandon their natural identities and preventing them from recognizing their own danger. These were not the only fashionable diversions that endangered women’s virtue and reputation. Any form of public activity, even walking, could attract criticism. Just as with dress, however, authors frequently stressed their own reasonableness in allowing women to follow their desire for diversions, providing they were innocent and moderate (the two great catchwords of didactic literature). This stance was essential given the growing acceptance of women’s role in creating a more virtuous society through sociable interactions with men; social commentators thus sought to balance a recognition of this beneficial role with their desire to keep women’s attention centered on their husbands and family.34 John Essex informed his readers that they could attend “publick Entertainments” as long as they had “a regard to Virtue; for those are the times to exercise it, and make a Proof of your own Steadiness and Constancy, when Virtue is more than ordinarily expos’d.”35 Another author permitted his reader to attend operas or assemblies “in the best of Company, and when you are invited by Persons whom it would be Illmanners to refuse.” He stressed that he was not against innocent pleasures, but merely wished her to be on her guard since her virtue was particularly threatened on these occasions.36 While John Hill’s female narrator allowed her charge to attend oratorios, plays and ridottos, she banned the public pleasure gardens of Ranelagh and Vauxhall: “There is something unnatural 32

That this association of masquerades and sexuality was common can be seen in Hogarth’s print of a masquerade ticket, which featured a “lecherometer” as well as various other indicators of rampant sexual activity. Stephens and George, eds., Catalogue of Prints and Drawings, print no. 1799. See also print no. 1747. 33 See Eliza Haywood, The Female Spectator, 6th ed., 4 vols. (London: T. Gardner, 1766), 1: 43–51. Behind these warnings lay a male fear that women might deliberately take advantage of the opportunities provided by the masquerade to trap men; see Spectator 8 (9 March 1711), 1: 35–8, for an explicit statement of this concern. Henry Fielding uses the idea for comic effect in Tom Jones. 34 See Barker-Benfield, Culture of Sensibility, pp. 158–60; Lawrence E. Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 35 Essex, Young Ladies Conduct, pp. 123–4. 36 D’Ancourt, Lady’s Preceptor, pp. 66–7. 57

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and mean in People of Virtue and Decency mixing with the Herd of common Prostitutes, and abandoned Rakes who are seen barefaced there.”37 Yet even the worst entertainments could be acceptable to some authors, provided that women took away the proper lessons. One writer suggested that young ladies should be taken to masquerades. Once a girl saw how masquerades encouraged “the confused mixture of different ranks and conditions,” with “the dregs of the people” freely circulating there, he argued, she would be eager to avoid them.38 Both education in polite behavior through sociability and education in domestic cares “may and ought to be pursued in a reasonable Manner,” argued another, though he stressed that the latter was too often neglected.39 Diversions had to be taken with care to ensure that class and gender boundaries were maintained. The goal is visible in the attitudes of conduct authors toward dancing; while they approved of it as a form of exercise, they warned against doing it in public, in order to gain attention or love. Once performed in public, dancing became an invitation to sexual misconduct. Those who allowed women to dance in mixed company recommended accepting only a few invitations, in good company, in order to be complaisant.40 Once again, authors sought to balance different aspects of women’s “nature” against one another. Complaisance and a love of diversion had to be weighed against the potential threat to women’s virtue. The great thrust of the didactic literature’s discussion of fashionable entertainment was toward keeping women out of the public eye. These writers argued that the modern enthusiasm for diversions literally diverted women’s attention away from their proper responsibilities to home and family. A man unfortunate enough to wed a woman reared on these diversions would soon realize his folly, unless he could subsist on “a Sarabrand, a Sonnet, or an Opera Tune” instead of real food.41 Even as they trivialized such interests, however, writers recognized the connections between participation in such entertainments and female power. They particularly feared that fashionable diversions led wives to defy their husbands’ authority. The seasonal migrations of the elite led one author to express mock sympathy for those ladies who ruled over “the Pleasures and the Fashions of the Town” for the half-year they spent in London, but who then were forced to retire to the country “under the usurp’d Power of their Husbands.”42 But immersion in

37 John Hill, The Conduct of a Married Life: Laid down in a Series of Letters, Written by the Honourable Juliana-Susannah Seymour, to a Young Lady, her Relation, Lately Married, 2d ed. (first published 1753; London: R. Baldwin, 1754), pp. 236, 246–7. 38 Old Maid 11 (24 January 1756). 39 Applebee’s Original Weekly Journal (22 March 1729). 40 See Essex, Young Ladies Conduct, pp. 93–4; Wilkes, Letter of Genteel and Moral Advice, p. 123; F.L., Virgin’s Nosegay, pp. 76–7. The discussions of dancing stand in marked contrast to the absolutely essential role it played for young women on the marriage market. 41 Applebee’s Original Weekly Journal (22 March 1729). 42 Gentleman’s Magazine 7 (August 1737): 497–8, from Common Sense 29 (20 August).

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fashionable life did not merely make for bad wives; it left young women easy prey to sexual predators by destroying their natural modesty and innocence. Like ships lost at sea, most young ladies had no moral guidance: From School, they are immediately initiated in public Assemblies, where the Mothers, fixed in deep Attention to Cards, turn their Daughters adrift, and leave them to their own Discretion; by that means being deprived of the Protection of that Convoy, which should direct, and steer them safe, thro’ the perilous Seas of Life; many of them are seised, as lawful Prizes, and carried off by advent’rous Pirates; some are split on hidden Rocks of Vice, and others are lost in the Shallows of Folly, and there remain sad Monuments of female Wreck, and Ruin. . . . From this irrational Method of Education, the female Sex imbibe such an early Passion for public Assemblies, and Cards; and are so enamoured with them, that they conceive a strong Aversion to domestic Life.43

Too much pleasure in public diversions, too much time away from home, inevitably led to a loss of natural feminine affections for home and family. Women participating in these diversions were warned that they risked their reputations even if they did not engage in any actual misconduct. In order to impress upon women the value of avoiding public entertainments of any sort, writers emphasized “that a Beauty concealed, is more esteemed and pursued, than one who every day exposes herself to the Sight of the whole World.”44 The author of An Essay on Modern Gallantry warned his readers to remember that women who were seen and praised too frequently in public never married so well as “those of a more private and limited Acquaintance”; instead, “when they have been admired, flattered, and fly-blown by all the gay Fops and Coxcombs about Town, they naturally wither into Age and Contempt.”45 Another writer made fears about women in public diversions and female sexuality even more explicit. In discussing the dangers of “criminal” pleasures, he included a lengthy list of diversions to be avoided: Such is the Pleasure of indulging impure Thoughts, beholding obscene Pictures or Statues, reading amorous Books, hearing or singing lascivious or amorous Songs; holding or listening to tender or passionate Discourses, going to Plays, Opera’s, Ridotto’s, Musick-Gardens, and a thousand other modern Diversions, which but contribute to weaken and vitiate the Heart . . . [and are no less dangerous] for being natural and alluring.46

Tying together pornography, the theater, and “passionate discourses” into a single threat to female chastity, he epitomized the male concern about

43 44 45 46

Marriott, Female Conduct, pp. xxiii–xxiv. D’Ancourt, Lady’s Preceptor, p. 56. Modern Gallantry, p. 49. F.L., Virgin’s Nosegay, pp. 74–5. Italics added to “modern.” 59

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female sexuality expressed through involvement in pleasurable diversions. Moreover, he explicitly perceived such diversions to be “modern Inventions.”47 Throughout their publications, didactic authors responded to what they saw as a growing trend for fashionable women to abandon their domestic duties in favor of public pleasures. By insisting that these pleasures represented threats to female virtue, and by condemning them for drawing women away from their supposedly natural areas of affection – home and family – authors sought to contain women within an extremely narrow conception of natural feminine behavior. At the same time, by consistently representing women as particularly prone to indulge in these immoral pleasures, they reinforced and naturalized the connection between women and the new forms of consumption and fashion that attracted so much eighteenth-century concern. If social critics attacked women who went out to public diversions, they were equally strong in their condemnation of fashionable pastimes in more private spaces. Among the most common criticisms were those aimed at gaming, excessive drinking – either of tea or alcohol – and novel-reading. Like the public diversions, these were grouped together as dangerous, new activities. Many of them obviously had a long history, but it was their innovative aspects that attracted attention. Gaming, for instance, increased dramatically in popularity among the English upper classes, especially during the reign of George II. Eliza Haywood dated the spread of gaming and its destructive effects precisely to the year 1720, when participation in the South Sea Bubble and government lotteries meant that people no longer strove to earn money through industry.48 Other writers made the same association but discussed gaming in more explicitly gendered terms, recognizing that both speculative investments and gaming gave women an opportunity to participate in financial activities, and that both represented instability and risk. Gaming was also an activity in which women competed with men on an equal basis, which may have contributed to the virulence of attacks against the practice.49 As they did with public diversions, critics related indulgence in such activities both to an abandonment of proper female domestic duty and to violations of natural female modesty and chastity.50

47 F.L., Virgin’s Nosegay, p. 59. Barker-Benfield, Culture of Sensibility, pp. 200–1, 204, also stresses the novelty of these public diversions. 48 Trevor Lummis and Jan Marsh, The Woman’s Domain: Women and the English Country House (London: Viking, 1990), p. 48; J. C. D. Clark, introduction to The Memoirs and Speeches of James, 2nd Earl Waldegrave 1742–63 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 43; Haywood, Female Spectator, 1: 121–3. 49 Barker-Benfield, Culture of Sensibility, pp. 198–9. 50 Mark Hallett, The Spectacle of Difference: Graphic Satire in the Age of Hogarth (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 57–71; Catherine Ingrassia, Authorship, Commerce, and Gender in Early Eighteenth-Century England: A Culture of Paper Credit (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), especially ch. 1.

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

Gaming was portrayed as antithetical to feminine “nature” on multiple grounds. First, it destroyed women’s beauty, thus diminishing their natural sexual attractiveness. After calling the woman gamester a “half human Tyger in Petticoats,” one commentator cried, All that Sweetness and Innocence, Gentleness, and winning Attraction of Look, Voice, and Sentiment, all that Modesty of Address, and listening Softness of good Breeding, which, when I was a young Fellow, seiz’d Mens Hearts, and made Women at once delightful and dangerous – All these are become imaginary Ideas! – Our Women have their Time so importantly engross’d by the Cards, that they are not at leisure to charm.51

But more than simply becoming unattractive, the gamestress faced an inevitable downward spiral: a Woman who has once given her self up to Gaming has taken leave of all Moral Virtues, and consequently lies expos’d to all Vices: She must of Course neglect her Duty to God, her Husband, and her Family; forget her very Children, and often rob them of their Fortunes, as she has her self of the most valuable Blessing, Time. . . . Not to Instance the unhappy Circumstances of such Women, who for the loss of Money, have been obliged to compound with the loss of their Chastity and Honour.52

Gaming women neglected husbands, family, and household, abandoning their natural affections in pursuit of an unnatural vice. One fictional husband complained to his gambling wife that “You ruin my Fortune, hazard your Virtue, destroy your Beauty, and impair your Health; you disregard me your Husband, neglect your Children, mispend [sic] your Time, and make no Provision for Eternity.”53 “What a Race of Warriors, Patriots, and Statesmen, is poor Britain to expect I shall bring into the World from the Wombs of such dissolute Mothers?” wailed the Midwife.54 The gaming woman let the household fall into disorder, the Servants having all that Time to themselves to intrigue and junkit; to filch and steal; to pawn the inferior Moveables of the Pantry and Kitchen; and lastly, to corrupt the Children, by teaching them Cursing, Swearing, Lying and Lewdness, which in all Probability may bring both Ruin and Disgrace to their Family.55 51

Gentleman’s Magazine 5 (August 1735): 480–1, from Prompter 75. Essex, Young Ladies Conduct, p. 37; see also p. 36, when he connects the consumption of alcohol to the practice of gaming, and both to the loss of chastity. 53 Gentleman’s Magazine 3 (December 1733): 645, from Universal Spectator 271 (15 December). 54 The Midwife: or the Old Woman’s Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 5 (1751). Virtually identical phrasing appears in Young Gentleman and Lady Instructed, 2: 143. 55 “Some serious Reflections on the fatal Consequences of Gaming, by Way of Application to the two preceding Tales,” in The Agreeable Companion; or, an Universal Medley of Wit and Good-Humour (London: W. Bickerton, 1745), p. 70. 52

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Even those authors who allowed their readers to indulge in occasional gaming stressed that it should only be practiced out of complaisance to the rest of the company and then only in small amounts; these were attempts to deal with the tensions between a woman’s “natural” role of pleasing others and the necessity for her to protect her virtue. The ideal protagonist of one story gambled occasionally before she married – “not to be thought Particular” – but as a wife, she said, “I look upon my Time and Money as my Husband’s Property.”56 Overindulgence in alcohol or tea was subject to similar attacks. It altered a woman’s natural character, took her away from her family, damaged her health, and was associated with other negative traits such as gossiping and lewdness. Essex warned his female readers that even medical cordials could “flush the Face as effectually as Brandy” and “disappoint your Desires of a healthy and beautiful Race of Children,” because they upset women’s natural delicacy of health.57 The Virgin’s Nosegay explicitly connected drinking with sexual incontinence when it announced that no man could love a woman who drank: “For who can reckon on the Discretion and Chastity of her, that is hourly liable to a Deprivation of Sense and Reason?”58 The two arguments were different but mutually reinforcing. Like masquerades and gaming, alcohol altered woman’s natural state, with all the implications for the abandonment of her feminine characteristics of chastity and domesticity. Yet, as with gaming, alcohol was also frequently identified with femininity and London life.59 Consumption of tea, that quintessential beverage of the eighteenthcentury lady, came under particular attack, precisely because of its strong associations with both femininity and consumerism. The growing ubiquity and complexity of the tea-drinking ritual led to the creation of many related products, including special furniture as well as porcelain and silver tea services. Scenes of women presiding over the tea-table even formed a subgenre of the pictorial conversation piece. The Spectator’s announcement that it aimed to furnish “Tea-Table Talk,” as a way of showing its commitment to female readers, made sense to its audience because of the metonymic association of femininity with tea-drinking – an association that the Spectator itself did much to encourage.60 Promoting a new print in 1742, one advertisement promised it would “please all true patriots and true Britons,” while also entertaining “the ladies at their spinets, their Toylets or TeaTables.”61 The tea-table was recognized in both theory and practice as the 56

Gentleman’s Magazine 2 (February 1732): 595, from Universal Spectator 174 (5 February). 57 Essex, Young Ladies Conduct, pp. 41–2; see also pp. 31, 36. 58 F.L., Virgin’s Nosegay, pp. 78–9. 59 Hallett, Spectacle of Difference, ch. 5. 60 Spectator 4 (5 March 1711), 1: 21–2. 61 Daily Post (30 March 1742), quoted in Hallett, Spectacle of Difference, p. 159. 62

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special domain of women, the tea ritual as the feminine counterpart to the masculine worlds of the coffee house and alehouse.62 Yet the Spectator’s use of the tea-table metaphor also depended for its rhetorical effect on the reader’s recognition of the association between tea and feminine idleness, gossip, and triviality, presenting itself as a moral alternative to the usual subjects of tea-table chat. Didactic authors thus frequently emphasized the dangers posed by the new habit. Tea was, first, seen as inherently unhealthy by many observers. Tea mocks the strong Appetite, relaxes the Stomach, satiates it with trifling light Nick-nacks, which have little in them to support hard Labour. In this Manner the Bold and Brave become dastardly, the Strong become weak, the Women become barren; or if they breed, their Blood is made so poor, that they have not the Strength to suckle, and if they do, the Child dies of the Gripes.63

More importantly, however, tea-drinking distracted a woman from her natural duties while encouraging her to give way to idleness and gossip, behavior that also seemed disturbingly “natural” to the sex. A contemporary print showed women at the tea-table spreading slander while the figure of Scandal drove Justice and Truth out the door of the salon (Figure 2). “In Billingsgate, Stockmarket, &c. the Females scatter Scandal in plain English Monosyllables,” complained one observer, “But Ladies of better breeding make the Tea Table their Mart to disperse Scandal, and attack Reputations with great Elegance, and soft Language.”64 The Female Spectator asserted that the tea ritual was hugely expensive and was “the utter Destruction of all Oeconomy – the Bane of good housewifery – and the Source of Idleness.”65 Even those who praised tea-table chat as an innocent diversion warned against the dangers of drifting into slander, reflecting the common assumption that women would be almost incapable of disciplining their tongues in such a setting.66 Another fashionable pastime that required great supervision was novelreading. Didactic writers maintained a complex relationship to the act of 62 Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace, Consuming Subjects: Women, Shopping, and Business in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), pp. 19–36; Philip Lawson, “Tea, Vice and the English State, 1660–1784,” in A Taste for Empire and Glory: Studies in British Overseas Expansion, 1660–1800 (Aldershot: Variorum, 1997), essay no. XIV, pp. 1–21; Philip Lawson, “Women and the Empire of Tea: Image and Counter-image in Hanoverian England,” in A Taste for Empire and Glory, essay no. XV, pp. 1–19; Stana Nenadic, “Middle-Rank Consumers and Domestic Culture in Edinburgh and Glasgow 1720–1840,” Past and Present 145 (1994), pp. 146–8; Barker-Benfield, Culture of Sensibility, pp. 158–9; Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 206–9. 63 Gentleman’s Magazine 7 (April 1737): 214, from Grubstreet Journal 379. 64 Gentleman’s Magazine 5 (March 1735): 133, from Universal Spectator 335 (8 March). 65 Haywood, Female Spectator, 2: 96; quoted in Kowaleski-Wallace, Consuming Subjects, p. 33. 66 Entertainer 6 (11 December 1717).

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Image not available

Figure 2 The Tea-Table. Reproduced by permission of the British Museum. The caption beneath reads in part, “Here we see Scandal (for our Sex too base)/ Seat its dread empire in the Female Race,/ ’Mong Beaus & Women, Fans and Mechlin Lace./ Chief Seat of Slander! Ever there we see,/ Thick Scandal circulate with right Bohea.”

reading, since their own works were obviously meant to be read and often employed similar devices to those of fiction. All agreed that women’s reading had to be carefully supervised. Reading was problematic because it took place in private and because of fiction’s power to stimulate imagination and desire.67 Novels, as Catherine Ingrassia argues, were both associated with women and seen as dangerous because of these “feminine” associations: “The novel appeals to a woman’s ‘tender and amorous’ and thus feminine disposition; yet it takes the natural and feminine and perverts it by making it, in a sense, too feminine.”68 The goal, then, was to make women’s reading

67

Jacqueline Pearson, Women’s Reading in Britain, 1750–1835: A Dangerous Recreation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 68 Ingrassia, Authorship, Commerce, and Gender, p. 51. See also John Brewer, “‘The Most Polite Age and the Most Vicious’: Attitudes towards Culture as a Commodity, 64

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habits – like all their behavior – absolutely transparent even though reading itself was a private act; women should be exposed to nothing that did not reinforce the moralizing influence of a conduct book. All fiction was tainted by association with stories of unrestrained lust, which many feared would awaken lascivious desires in its female readers. One early eighteenth-century author compared fictional works to “Poison”: Their Style, Matter, Language, and Design are pointed against the Defence of Vertue. They sully the Fancy, over heat Passion, and awake Folly; and like lewd Pictures, are the worse for being excellent. They kindle those Flames that cannot be extinguished without Trouble, nor entertain’d without a Crime. Nay, like the Fire of Hell, they are almost Eternal, and what is worse, the very Torment pleases.69

Almost identical words were used in the Weekly Oracle, which went on to portray the feared results: Those Scenes set the Sex into a Fit of longing; for tho’ Women were made of Bone, they retain all the Pliableness of Flesh; and the Fable that kindles the Passion, shews her the way to carry on the Intrigue, and at length is turned into a real Story; but with this Difference, that instead of a Prince, Madamoiselle [sic] goes off with a Valet de Chambre.70

Another writer complained that fashionable education made girls of eighteen ignorant in everything except sexual knowledge, where they demonstrated a disturbing precocity. He believed that these modern girls suffered from a defective education, “their Closets supply’d with the most ludicrous and obscene Pieces; Plays, Novels and Romances are introduc’d instead of the Practice of Piety, the Whole Duty of Man, or the Ladies Calling.”71 Behind such diatribes lay the constant, unresolved tension between attempts to deny female sexual desire altogether and fears about its arousal. Didactic authors sometimes listed those works they considered appropriate for women to read, usually emphasizing moral and religious works, as in the case above.72 “We would not be understood to exclude Reading from the

1660–1800,” in The Consumption of Culture, 1600–1800: Image, Object, Text, ed. Ann Bermingham and John Brewer (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 354–5. 69 William Darrell, The Gentleman Instructed . . . To Which is Added, a Word to the Ladies. 8th ed. (London: E. Smith, 1723), pp. 164–5. 70 The Weekly Oracle; or, Universal Library (1734–7; London: T. Read, 1737), p. 146. 71 Applebee’s Original Weekly Journal (11 January 1729). 72 The Spectator frequently printed letters requesting a list of appropriate reading for women, to which [George Berkeley], The Ladies Library, 3 vols. (London: J. T., 1714), which Steele commissioned, can be seen as the ultimate response. 65

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Employment of a young Lady,” said the Weekly Oracle, “but then let it be of such Books as will mend the Mind, such as agreeably point out the Mistakes to which human Nature, and more particularly the Sex, is liable; such are the Spectators, &c.”73 Wetenhall Wilkes did not absolutely rule out novels and plays, but he urged “Caution; lest such Parts of them, as are not strictly tied down to sedateness, should inculcate such Light, over-gay Notions as might by unperceiv’d Degrees soften and mislead the Understanding.”74 Books were safe when they reinforced the ostensibly pre-existing, natural gender categories. All women’s reading should “improve them, as they are women. . . . They should all tend to advance the value of their innocence, as virgins; improve their understandings, as wives; and regulate their tenderness, as parents and mistresses of families.”75 Just as immoral reading could work to draw women away from their duties to home and family and encourage illicit sexuality, so good reading was seen as a method of channeling sexuality into its proper spheres of marriage and motherhood. But writers’ awareness of the powerful influence of fiction worked in subtler ways as well. One crucial aspect of the naturalization of femininity in eighteenth-century conduct books was the writers’ own denial of their didactic role, even within this overtly pedagogical format. If a woman was naturally modest and chaste, then she would behave modestly and chastely naturally, with no conscious effort. Conduct writers thus presented themselves as simply reminding their readers to go along with their natural instincts, to behave in a truly womanly manner. One rhetorical technique to reinforce this self-presentation was the use of fictional devices that masked the works’ prescriptive role. Rather than straightforward, didactic prose, eighteenth-century conduct manuals commonly took the form of letters to a young woman from a relative, or fictitious dialogues. This reality claim was not, of course, unique to conduct books. The early eighteenth century was the heyday of periodicals that relied on fictional personae for their editorial voice – Sir Isaac Bickerstaff and the “club” in the Spectator being but two influential examples. Periodicals also frequently relied on real and fictional correspondence from their readers to fill their pages, and they borrowed freely from personal writings as well.76 And this was, of course, the era of the epistolary novel, which depended in turn on its readers’ knowledge

73

Weekly Oracle, p. 146. Wilkes, Letter of Genteel and Moral Advice, pp. 104–5. 75 Young Gentleman and Lady Instructed, 1: 205–6. 76 Sir Richard Steele used his own love letters as exemplars, for instance. See also Helen Berry, “‘Nice and Curious Questions’: Coffee Houses and the Representation of Women in John Dunton’s Athenian Mercury,” The Seventeenth Century 12 (1997): 257–76; John Brewer, “This, That and the Other: Public, Social and Private in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Shifting the Boundaries: Transformation of the Languages of Public and Private in the Eighteenth Century, ed. D. Castiglione and L. Sharpe (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1995), pp. 12–14. 74

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that their own personal correspondence would frequently be shared among friends and family. Didactic literature thus flourished in a time when the boundaries between fact and fiction were remarkably fluid. The format of personal advice in printed works masked the fact that these were commercial products intended for publication, not simply correspondence between real individuals. This method also asserted the direct relevance of the literature to women’s daily life by constantly reasserting its basis in reality. Using model letters or the advice-to-a-relative format, finally, enabled the author to assume a sympathetic reader who would automatically agree with the precepts offered. The implied reader was one who was already the natural female being described, again helping to mask the didactic role of the author. Stories with plots and rudimentary character development encouraged the reader to identify with the characters and lessons presented. Samuel Richardson’s use of excerpts from his Familiar Letters as the basis for Pamela shows the slippage between letters which were overtly models to be followed in individual correspondence, and the creation of ideal literary characters to be emulated. In some sense, then, didactic literature embodied the morally-upright alternative to the novels it criticized. At the same time, however, fictional devices also led to some of the ambiguities of novels. Showing fictional characters engaging in immoral behavior ran the risk that readers would identify not with the heroines but with the villains.77 The widespread use of fictional forms in moralizing literature testified to both the allure and the danger of fiction, as writers sought, with only partial success, to harness its energies for their own purposes.

Femininity and consumption In their various attacks on fashionable behavior, didactic authors were responding to changes in their society involving the development and spread of many new forms of consumption, beyond basic necessities. These writers struggled to come to terms with women’s role as active and avid consumers, simultaneously drawing attention to the role of women in this area and urging them away, claiming that women’s interest in consumption was natural and that it turned women into unnatural monsters. Yet because the ostensible triviality of consumption served many didactic authors’ purposes in portraying women as fundamentally childlike and unable to cope with more important affairs, they did not simply reject all forms of fashionable society. Many of them also recognized that women’s consumption provided a boon

77

Vivien Jones, “The Seductions of Conduct: Pleasure and Conduct Literature,” in Pleasure in the Eighteenth Century, ed. R. Porter and M. M. Roberts (New York: New York University Press, 1996), pp. 108–32; Vivien Jones, Women in the Eighteenth Century: Constructions of Femininity (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 16. 67

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to the English economy, the position classically stated in Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees.78 Thus one author referred to “the genius of the ladies which hath for some years past shot out in several exhorbitant inventions, for the greater consumption of our manufacture, [a genius which] is superior to the man’s.” He added that women’s fashion (more varied and less practical than men’s) was not all bad since it encouraged employment.79 Moreover, a woman’s position as a consumer of luxuries revealed her status as a lady of leisure and set her off from those below her. The primary response to these conflicting values was to define consumption as quintessentially feminine and production as masculine. Yet women’s consumption was still seen primarily as useless if not actually immoral. Joseph Addison explained in 1711 that he hoped to use the Spectator to encourage women to more useful pastimes. He argued that female Amusements seem contrived for them rather as they are Women, than as they are reasonable Creatures; and are more adapted to the Sex, than to the Species. . . . The sorting of a Suit of Ribbons, is reckon’d a very good Morning’s work; and if they make an Excursion to a Mercer’s or a Toy-shop, so great a Fatigue makes them unfit for any thing else all the Day after.80

A week later he was again remarking on women’s “Natural Weakness of being taken with Outside and Appearance.” Without a proper education, a girl was likely to fall prey to unscrupulous men taking advantage of this natural weakness – “A Pair of fringed Gloves may be her Ruin.”81 Didactic writers therefore created a vision of the consumer society as one naturally attractive to women yet fraught with dangers, safe only under the direction of a responsible male. Critics complaining about bad wives frequently portrayed women who insisted on spending money on fashionable goods when their husbands asked them not to. A story printed in the 78 Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Public Benefits, ed. F. B. Kaye, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924). On the ambiguous attitudes toward consumption, fashion, and gender at mid-century, see Harriet Guest, “‘These Neuter Somethings’: Gender Difference and Commercial Culture in Mid-Eighteenth-Century England,” in Refiguring Revolutions: Aesthetics and Politics from the English Revolution to the Romantic Revolution, ed. K. Sharpe and S. Zwicker (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 173–94. 79 Young Gentleman and Lady Instructed, pp. 154–6; quotation p. 156. On this argument in eighteenth-century economic theory, see Barker-Benfield, Culture of Sensibility, especially pp. 174–8 (on Mandeville); Christopher Berry, The Idea of Luxury: A Conceptual and Historical Investigation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); John Sekora, Luxury: The Concept in Western Thought from Eden to Smollett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977); Gordon Vichert, “The Theory of Conspicuous Consumption in the 18th Century,” in The Varied Pattern: Studies in the 18th Century, ed. P. Hughes and D. Williams (Toronto: A. M. Hakkert, 1971), pp. 253–68. 80 Spectator 10 (12 March 1711), 1: 46–7. 81 Spectator 15 (17 March 1711), 1: 66–7.

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Gentleman’s Magazine, for example, presented such a woman responding to her husband’s request that they move to a cheaper life in the country. “Can you imagine I intend to be immur’d for the Benefit of our Family; or deny my self all the Pleasures of Life, to raise Fortunes for your Children?” she asked in horror. “I did not take a Husband to bid adieu to the World.”82 John Hill’s virtuous female narrator, in contrast, told her ward to avoid the fashionable new “India-shops” – which in addition to being venues for sexual trysts also damaged legitimate trade – and to deal only with those vendors her husband recommended. Such advice was also aimed at forestalling women’s tendency to “steal” from their husbands through spending on themselves money intended for the household.83 The growing emphasis on “taste” was another aspect of this attempt to control women’s desire to consume. To give control of taste to women risked feminizing culture, a fear exemplified in the image of culture as a prostitute, bought and sold by men but also profiting from them.84 An allegory published in 1738 made the gender implications explicit in a “dream”: the female embodiment of “Fashion” usurped the throne from her elder brother, “Taste,” after he was foolish enough to share his power with her.85 Yet, as we have seen, women themselves were also portrayed as commodities, gaining their value by possessing the “jewel” of chastity. All of these associations between women and consumption thus coexisted uncomfortably in the discourse of femininity.

Conclusion This linkage of femininity and consumption, like the broader division between domestic and public activities so strongly advocated by didactic authors, has frequently been seen as the product of a middle-class sensibility.86 Yet there is no necessary correlation between this feminine ideology and the

82 Gentleman’s Magazine 2 (February 1732): 602, from Universal Spectator 175 (12 February). 83 Hill, Conduct of Married Life, pp. 249–50; Barker-Benfield, Culture of Sensibility, p. 177 (citing Mandeville). 84 Brewer, “Polite Age,” pp. 356–8. 85 Gentleman’s Magazine 8 (April 1738): 192–3, from The Reveur 19. See Ann Bermingham, “Elegant Females and Gentlemen Connoisseurs: The Commerce in Culture and Self-Image in Eighteenth-Century England,” in Bermingham and Brewer, eds., Consumption of Culture, p. 491; Barker-Benfield, Culture of Sensibility, pp. 205–14. 86 See Ros Ballaster et al., Women’s Worlds: Ideology, Femininity and the Woman’s Magazine (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), p. 73; Barker-Benfield, Culture of Sensibility, p. 173; Shawn Lisa Maurer, Proposing Men: Dialectics of Gender and Class in the EighteenthCentury English Periodical (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998); Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).

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middle class. These works reflect an adjustment to an increasingly commercialized economy, but not through praise of bourgeois industriousness. Although literacy within the middle class, particularly its female members, was growing in this period, and although it is likely that these women contributed to the success of conduct books, it does not necessarily follow that conduct authors were self-consciously appealing to this new readership and attacking the landed elite. As Jeremy Black has pointed out, the aristocracy as well as the middling orders provided enthusiastic audiences for the sentimental art and literature of the period.87 Moreover, as I suggested in the previous chapter, there are indications that the authors of conduct manuals expected an elite readership. Many of them explicitly addressed “ladies.” They offered women the “government” of household and servants, earning the pleasure of authority over social inferiors in return for wifely subservience. While this fact in itself would not be enough to demonstrate elite readership, given the loose meaning of the term “lady” in this period, there is evidence that some aristocratic women did read these works. The Countess of Coventry owned several conduct books, for example, as did Lady Sarah Cowper.88 Perhaps the strongest indication of the authors’ intentions to reach beyond the industrious middle class comes from the amount of time they spent urging women not to waste their days reading novels, attending plays, masquerades, and assemblies, and gossiping over the tea-table. They emphasized the importance of avoiding such activities because they assumed that their readers would have the wealth and leisure, as well as the inclination, to waste their days in precisely this way. It is, of course, possible that a woman who could not afford to engage in these pastimes might console herself with books which assured her that staying at home made her a model of feminine virtue. It is also impossible to ascertain the exact social position of most women who read these books. Nonetheless, it is clear that conduct book authors did not limit their purview to the middle class, and that their works can also be seen as addressing women of high rank and wealth. As I will argue in the following chapters, some such women did indeed employ the language of femininity expressed in these works. Early eighteenth-century didactic writers reacted to the changes they encountered in their society by creating a vision of femininity based on a strict dichotomy between masculine and feminine roles, and on women’s rejection of fashionable society in favor of virtuous domesticity. This new discourse portrayed femininity as essentially passive and spontaneous, 87 Jeremy Black, “Introduction,” in Culture and Society in Britain, 1660–1800, ed. J. Black (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), pp. 23–4. 88 Ruth Perry, The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), Appendix B, pp. 339–54. These included “Advice to a Daughter,” probably the Marquess of Halifax’s work, which was often known by that name. Anne Kugler, “Prescription, Culture, and Shaping Identity: Lady Sarah Cowper (1644–1720)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1994).

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in contrast to earlier views of women’s active involvement in monitoring their own behavior; social critics found an enormously effective way to deal with the threat of female agency by denying its existence altogether. They appealed to their audience by glorifying women who conformed to feminine models, as well as by drawing attention to the power women could wield within the household. But this literature was riddled with contradictions. It emphasized the sexual allure of feminine modesty; it raised the specter of rampant female sexual desire while denying that such desire existed; it disapproved of leisured women while assuming that its readers were leisured; it attacked novels while using novelistic techniques; it criticized female consumerism while insisting that consumerism was inherently feminine. The chapters that follow will explore the ways in which women of quality accepted, ignored, adapted, and exploited this discourse as they represented their own behavior to different audiences.

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3

Marriage To speak plainly, I am very sorry for the forlorn state of Matrimony, which is as much ridicul’d by our Young Ladys as it us’d to be by young fellows; in short, both Sexes have found the Inconveniencys of it, and the Apellation of Rake is as genteel in a Woman as a Man of Quality. . . . You may Imagine we marry’d Women look very silly; we have nothing to excuse our selves but that twas done a great while ago and we were very young when we did it.1

In this letter to her sister, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu expresses what was, in the early eighteenth century, a commonplace view of wedlock. Marriage, she writes, is such an object of mockery that even women have lost interest in it, and married women like herself must “excuse” themselves for their unfashionable behavior. Obviously, Lady Mary’s tone is light, but, as we saw in Chapter 1, she expresses ideas that were being argued quite seriously in a variety of circles. Many of her contemporaries agreed that marriage was becoming an object of mockery, used only as a cynical means of increasing wealth. It may seem, however, that these fears and the ideals presented in didactic literature bore little relevance to the real lives of women and men, particularly those of the elite whose behavior was targeted for criticism. After all, why would women who experienced the benefits and freedoms of fashionable society pay any attention to such works? Lady Mary’s willingness to joke about the perceived crisis in marriage might be seen to support such an argument; she was even reported by one mildly shocked contemporary to have wittily defended inconstancy during a conversation about love.2 Love and marriage, it seems, were not matters that women of quality took seriously. Yet Lady Mary herself famously married for love, eloping with Edward Wortley after his negotiations with her father broke down over the financial settlement. Even in matches apparently made only for the mercenary reasons deplored by didactic writers, moreover, some women discussed their marriages in terms taken directly from the moralizing literature. Money and rank may have been the primary consideration in many aristocratic matches, but members of the Quality were remarkably unwilling to admit this about

1

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to the Countess of Mar, 31 October [1723], in Robert Halsband, ed., The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965–7), 2: 32. 2 Lady Anne Irwin to Lord Carlisle, London, 18 January [1729], Historical Manuscripts Commission (HMC) Carlisle, p. 55. 72

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themselves or their friends and families. Instead, women often presented themselves as intensely loving wives who were unique in their unfashionable devotion and obedience to their husbands. Indeed, so common was such rhetoric that comments like Lady Mary’s themselves became fashionable clichés; being unfashionable was “in.” But this language proved remarkably flexible, ranging from humorous self-deprecation to a carefully exploited tool with which women not only demonstrated their own moral authority but even, paradoxically, defied their husbands.

Marrying well Recent scholarship has shown the variety of factors that determined what made a “good match” in eighteenth-century elite circles. While financial and social status continued to be important throughout the early modern period, they were not all-determining. Wealth and rank set the basic parameters for suitable candidates and helped determine which persons a potential spouse might have the opportunity to meet. Within these parameters, however, other issues often played the deciding role. These included more abstract values, such as character and reputation, as well as mutual compatibility and love.3 Elizabeth, Lady Rawdon even candidly told her brother that she married and moved to Ireland in order to get out from under her mother’s thumb, perhaps a more common motivation than most women were willing to admit.4 It is not my concern here to discuss all the myriad factors behind aristocratic marriages. Rather, my goal is to show that many members of the Quality believed that it was important to emphasize the same issues seen as significant by those social commentators who believed that marriage was in a state of crisis. The financial and social stakes were clearly always important, and it is difficult to find a report about a potential spouse or recent marriage that does not discuss the marriage settlement. But those same members of the Quality who were careful to arrange socially and financially beneficial matches also often stressed different concerns when evaluating their own and others’ marital choices.

3

Linda Pollock, “Review Article: ‘An Action Like a Strategem’: Courtship and Marriage from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century,” Historical Journal 30 (1987): 483–98; J. V. Beckett, The Aristocracy in England 1660–1914 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), pp. 103–8; A. P. W. Malcomson, The Pursuit of the Heiress: Aristocratic Marriage in Ireland, 1750–1820 (Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 1982); David Thomas, “The Social Origins of Marriage Partners of the British Peerage in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Population Studies 26 (1972): 99–111. For the variety of factors at play in the marriages of one aristocratic family, see Stella Tillyard, Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox, 1740–1832 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1994). 4 Elizabeth, Lady Rawdon to Earl of Huntingdon, Moira, 13 December 1752, HMC Hastings III, pp. 78–9. 73

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Historians have pointed out that marriage affected women’s lives in far greater ways than it affected men’s; women realized that their social and personal opportunities were likely to depend heavily on their choice of spouse.5 It is not surprising, then, that discussions of marriages, both their own and others’, occupied much of the personal writing of elite women. Didactic writers were not alone in complaining that marriages for love had somehow fallen out of fashion, to be replaced by avarice and social climbing. Elizabeth Robinson was convinced that money was the only consideration in contemporary matches. “A man of merit and a younger brother is a purchase only for a great fortune,” she wrote, “as for those who have more merit than wealth, they must turn the penny by disposing of their useless virtues for riches; the exchange may sometimes be difficult, virtues not being sterling, nor merit the current coin of the nation.”6 Writing of herself a few days later, she lamented, While Hymen holds by Mammon’s charter, my affections would assuredly be slighted, having nothing but myself in the scale, and some few vanities that make me light . . . What is a woman without gold or fee simple? a toy while she is young, and a trifle when she is old.7

Elizabeth’s comments clearly reflect her insecurity about her wealth and status. But even those whose own futures were not at stake could share her views. Writing about a beautiful young acquaintance, Lady Jane Coke expressed doubt that even such beauty without money could win a husband, since “marrying for Love is quite out of fashion.”8 In this climate, few people were willing to acknowledge to their peers that their sole reason for choosing a partner was money. This may seem unsurprising, but it is often overlooked by those scholars who argue that marriage was accepted among the elite as a financial negotiation alone. When wealth did seem to be the only motivation, the couple in question were likely to be roundly condemned. Lady Irwin’s response to one man’s “pursuit of a great fortune” was typical: “she’s very plain, and at her own disposal; he very 5 See Robert B. Shoemaker, Gender in English Society, 1650–1850: The Emergence of Separate Spheres? (London: Longman, 1998), p. 92; Sarah Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, 1550–1720 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 129–31. 6 Elizabeth Robinson to Duchess of Portland, Bath, 25 January 1740, in Matthew Montagu, ed., The Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, With Some of the Letters of Her Correspondents, 3rd ed., 4 vols. (London: Printed for T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1810–13), 1: 82–3. 7 Elizabeth Robinson to Duchess of Portland, Bath, 30 January 1740, in Montagu, ed., Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, 1: 88–9. 8 Lady Jane Coke to Mrs. Eyre, Longford, 20 January 1749, in Mrs. Ambrose (i.e. Florence A. Monica) Rathborne, ed., Letters from Lady Jane Coke to her Friend Mrs. Eyre at Derby 1747–1758 (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., Ltd., 1899), p. 25.

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assidious [sic], and handsome; [so] that ’tis very likely the conclusion of the affair will be matrimony, and the end of it misery.”9 Ann Granville was equally scathing about another match between a “very pretty, modest, wellbehaved” eighteen-year-old girl and a “cross, covetous” but wealthy sixtyyear-old. “How little can the show of gold and equipages make up for all the disagreeable hours she passes at home,” Ann wrote piously, despite her certainty that the union was “the admiration of the old and the envy of the young!”10 Ready as some women of quality were to attack the supposedly mercenary matches of others, it is not surprising that in discussing their own marriage negotiations or those of their families, many chose to emphasize character and emotional connection, and to minimize the financial aspects. The Duchess of Marlborough took pride in the financial and social gains she made through the matches she arranged for members of her family. She also claimed, however, that when her granddaughter, Lady Godolphin, rejected a suitor, she accepted Lady Godolphin’s refusal and “Took her in my armes & Assured her That she need not be in any trouble, for I would not ask her, to Marry the Emperour of the World if she did not like him.”11 Arranging the ill-fated match between her daughter and Lord Coke, the Duchess of Argyll announced, with spectacularly bad judgment, “I like him very much, he appears to me to have a very good understanding, & a great deal of knowledg [sic], & I think a very sweet disposition.”12 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu advised a friend that it was better to marry a rich man than a poor one, but nevertheless, “if the Difference between your choice and your Father’s is only between a great Estate and a Competency, tis better to be privately happy than Splendidly Miserable.”13 Even those most political of weddings, within the royal family, were by the eighteenth century being discussed optimistically in terms of affection and free choice; after his wedding, the Prince of Wales reportedly announced “that were he again free and she a private gentlewoman he should prefer her for any other of her sex.”14 9

Anne, Viscountess Irwin to Lord Carlisle, London, 9 January [1733], HMC Carlisle, p. 95. Ann Granville to Lady Throckmorton, London, 25 May 1739, in Lady Llanover, ed., The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany: With Interesting Reminiscences of King George the Third and Queen Charlotte, 1st ser., 3 vols. (London: Richard Bentley, 1861–2), 2: 54–5. 11 Duchess of Marlborough, narrative, BL Add. MS 61451, fol. 25v. 12 Duchess of Argyll to Countess of Dalkeith, Sudbrooke, 1 July 1746, in J. A. Home, ed., The Letters and Journals of Lady Mary Coke, 4 vols. (Edinburgh: David Douglas (privately printed), 1889), 1: cxxiii–cxxiv. Lord Coke’s cruelty and their eventual formal separation would become grist for the gossip mills for years. 13 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Philippa Mundy, [10 January 1713], in Halsband, ed., Complete Letters, 1: 177–8. 14 Lady M. Killmorey to Lady Anne Hastings, 4 May 1736, in George Hastings Wheler, ed., Hastings Wheler Family Letters [Part 2], 1704–1739 (Wakefield: West Yorkshire Printing Co. (privately printed), 1935), p. 129. 10

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To insist on the presence of such rhetoric is not to take that rhetoric at face value, or to suggest that the women who deployed it refused to acknowledge other factors. Almost every discussion of a marriage mentioned its financial terms, and the specifics of the settlements were standard subjects of gossip. Even those who criticized mercenary unions were often far from dewy-eyed romantics. Elizabeth Robinson praised Lord Sandwich’s love match but added an important qualification: “Love has a good right over the marriages of men, but not of women, for men raise their wives to their rank, women stoop to their husband’s if they choose below themselves.”15 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu came to regret her choice of husband, sharply criticized others who eloped or made unequal matches, and opposed her own daughter’s choice of husband. The ideal betrothal continued to be one that combined affection with parity of social standing, wealth, and age. Yet the rhetoric that saw mercenary matches as both fashionable and immoral remained important, even among those families who were most likely to use marriage as a tool for social or political purposes.

Living the ideal? Didactic writers saw a loving marriage as the key to female virtue and a stable social order. How did women react to the tremendous ideological value given to marriage once they had committed themselves to a spouse? Correspondence offers us the opportunity to watch women constructing their identities as wives, with the idea in mind of how their husbands would react to these constructions. One function that letters between husband and wife served was for both parties to assert and to reinforce their notions of the proper relations between them.16 As we will see, the ideal of a loving partnership remained strong for many married women. It is clear that couples expected love to flourish in marriage. Love was not simply sexual passion, but neither should we assume that love between eighteenth-century husbands and wives was limited to mutual esteem or was identical to familial affection. Denying to her friend Anne Wortley that she was in love, Lady Mary Pierrepont wrote, Pray tell me the name of him I love, that I may (according to the laudable custom of lovers) sigh to the woods and groves hereabout, and teach it to the echo. You

15

Elizabeth Robinson to her mother, Bullstrode, 20 October 1741, in Montagu, ed., Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, 1: 303. 16 Mendelson and Crawford usefully caution against taking women’s correspondence at face value without thinking of their “awareness of their readers’ expectations” (Women in Early Modern England, p. 126); but it is precisely this awareness that makes such correspondence a valuable source for the historian. 76

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see, being I am in love, I am willing to be so in order and rule; I have been turning over God knows how many books to look for precedents.17

An avid reader, Lady Mary was both aware and suspicious of literary models – the novels and romances so distrusted by conduct writers. But when she wrote to Edward Wortley, she struggled to define her feelings in a way that presented her both as loving and as a woman of reason. “I rather chuse to use the word Freindship than Love,” she finally decided, “because in the general Sense that word is spoke, it signifies a Passion rather founded on Fancy than Reason, and when I say Freindship I mean a mixture of Tendernesse and Esteem, and which a long acquaintance encreases not decays.”18 The ideal love between husband and wife was one of strong but controlled emotional attachment. When William, Lord Cowper sent a marriage proposal to Mary Clavering in 1706, he assured her that he was “not so much . . . madly in Love,” but convinced “from cool reason & judgment” that he would be most happy married to her.19 Yet he also assured her that he was “in Love” with her, emphasizing that her good qualities deserved his “passion.”20 This love between spouses, then, was distinct from other forms of affection. In some aristocratic women’s correspondence, as we will see, love could be used to emphasize their virtue and to claim moral authority. It was also entirely compatible with, indeed dependent on, obedience to their husbands. Such ideas about love embody precisely the notions expressed in the works of conduct writers; love in this sense implied a recognition of the proper, complementary roles of husband and wife. For many conduct writers, the mercenary concerns that supposedly dominated fashionable society made love impossible. They presented their values as antithetical to those of fashionable society, and scholars have often taken these arguments at face value.21 But the language of love articulated by the didactic writers could play a significant role in the letters of women of quality, even in marriages that were unquestionably made with material or social gains in mind. The Earl of Strafford, for instance, almost certainly

17 Lady Mary Pierrepont to Anne Wortley, 21 August 1709, in Halsband, ed., Complete Letters, 1: 10. Anne was the sister of Edward Wortley, Lady Mary’s suitor, and Lady Mary was undoubtedly aware that he was both coaching Anne and reading her responses. 18 Lady Mary Pierrepont to Edward Wortley, [24 March 1711], in Halsband, ed., Complete Letters, 1: 95–6. 19 Lord Cowper to Mary Clavering, [1706], Hertfordshire Record Office (HRO) D/EP F193. 20 Lord Cowper to Mary Clavering, “Thursd. 9. clock morn” [1706], HRO D/EP F193. 21 From this comes the frequent insistence of scholars that conduct literature reflected or created “middle-class” values. See Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Vivien Jones, Women in the Eighteenth Century: Constructions of Femininity (London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 14–17.

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married Anne Johnson, daughter of a wealthy shipbuilder, because of her large dowry and expected inheritance. His promotion to an earldom coincided with their marriage in 1711; she provided the wealth necessary to support the earldom, and in return acquired a title. They thus exemplified the “marriage à la mode” so bitterly attacked by social critics. Moreover, Lady Strafford could be seen to be precisely the sort of fashionable woman that these writers targeted for their harshest criticism; her letters to her husband are filled with descriptions of time devoted to visits, plays, operas, and shopping, as well as her own weekly assemblies.22 Yet her correspondence also insists so strongly and so frequently on her love for her husband that it creates the impression that her entire identity was bound up in her role as loving wife. Whether or not this accurately reflected her true feelings, she obviously believed that such a self-presentation would please her husband. Again and again, Lady Strafford’s letters reveal her self-conscious identification with feminine ideals. Almost immediately after their marriage, Strafford left for the Continent, and she wrote to him on the day he departed to promise that “the only pleasure I now have is thinking & writing to what I love better then my Self . . . for all the world is nothing to me without your Dear Self.”23 She regularly sent her husband the Spectator, at his request, but she particularly recommended an issue of December 1711, saying she thought it was “pretty.” The issue in question presented a woman’s defense of her choice of quiet domesticity in the country with her husband over fashionable London life, and contained a classic statement of marital devotion: I am marry’d, and have no other concern but to please the Man I love; he’s the End of every Care I have; if I dress ’tis for him, if I read a Poem or a Play ’tis to qualify my self for a Conversation agreeable to his Taste: He’s almost the End of my Devotions, half my Prayers are for his Happiness. – I love to talk of him, and never hear him named but with Pleasure and Emotion.24

Lady Strafford clearly intended her husband to compare her attitude with that of the fictional wife; indeed, much of her correspondence stressed the same willingness to abandon fashionable society for the quiet company of her husband. A year after sending him that issue of the Spectator, for example, she wrote of her pleasure at the thought of moving to his new house in Twickenham. She assured him that she thought they could live happily alone there, “in A rurall Romantick way,” though “’twould not be very much in the

22

Letters of Anne, Countess of Strafford, to Thomas, Earl of Strafford, BL Add. MS 22226, passim. 23 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, Fristone Hall, 8 October 1711, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 1r. 24 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 21 December 1711, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 47r. Spectator 254 (21 December 1711), in Donald F. Bond, ed., The Spectator, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 2: 488–9. 78

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Image not available

Figure 3 Gawen Hamilton, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, and his Family (1732). Oil on canvas. Reproduced by permission of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Despite the domestic interior, Hamilton’s painting emphasizes Lord Strafford’s patriarchal and social power, through the arrangement of the figures, the large scale and sumptuous furnishings of the room, and the distant servants on the staircase.

modern way of living.”25 Her disclaimer strongly echoed the comments from the Spectator, but she was not seriously suggesting that they seek rural retirement. Instead, such remarks allowed her to demonstrate the depth of her affection by simultaneously distancing herself from fashionable society and drawing attention to the fact that actually to abandon it would be a sacrifice for her love. 25 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 18 January 1711/12, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 73r.

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Lady Strafford thus explicitly referred to the distinction between fashionable society and loving marriage upon which the didactic writers insisted. Nor was her use of this distinction confined to her discussions of rural life and domesticity. In late December 1711 she wrote to the Earl to wish him a happy new year, remarking that “I know ’tis being very Old fashon’d to wish happy new years but . . . I hope you & I shall allways be so Old fashon’d to preferr won anothere before any body elce.”26 Her insistence that such love was rejected by fashionable society and reserved only for an upright minority was central, as we have seen, to the didactic writings of authors who would condemn much of her behavior. Yet her letters show that life in the beau monde and conduct-book rhetoric were not always mutually incompatible in practice. Such language is evident in other women’s letters as well. In 1742, the recently-married Elizabeth Montagu announced to a friend that she was quite content to confine herself to domestic concerns and to abandon fashionable society, since she believed that trying to combine the role of “good wife” with participation in this society was “bringing together things in their natures contrary.”27 Lady Mary Pierrepont’s epistolary negotiations with Edward Wortley before they eloped reveal her self-conscious manipulation of the contrast between true love and mercenary marriage. Warning him that her family was trying to force her to marry another man, she insisted on the importance of both love and obedience in marriage: I am perswaded the Man they force me to is of a humour to suffer me to do what I please, but what is Liberty to one that carrys her goaler [sic] in her breast? My Duty is more a chain to me than all others that could be impos’d on me.28

She wanted Wortley to be aware of the sacrifice she was willing to make for him, but at the same time she wanted him to see her as making the virtuous choice. When they finally did elope, she wrote in her first letter to him of her confusion over the “proper matrimonial stile” and hoped that in the future “I may see you retain the same fondnesse for me as I shall certainly mine for you; and the noise of a Nursery may have more charms for us than the Music of an Opera.”29 Throughout these exchanges, she insisted repeatedly on the contrast between the dictates of the beau monde into which she was born and the choice she had made in favor of unfashionable matrimonial love, a contrast central to much of the period’s commentary on gender relations. 26 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 25 December 1711, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 52v. 27 Elizabeth Montagu to Anne Donnellan, 5 December 1742, in Montagu, ed., Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, 2: 243. 28 Lady Mary Pierrepont to Edward Wortley, [c. 15 June 1712], in Halsband, ed., Complete Letters, 1: 124–5. 29 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Edward Wortley, Walling Wells, 22 October [1712], in Halsband, ed., Complete Letters, 1: 168–9.

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It is possible, then, that far from becoming more highly valued, during the early eighteenth century the language of love was actually becoming unfashionable. But the use of such language by these women suggests that this very disclaimer had itself become a fashionable cliché, a cliché that enabled their protestations simultaneously to hold a humorous and a highly serious message. Ann Granville chose to praise her friend Lady Catherine Throckmorton in 1739 for her happy marriage by stressing the Throckmortons’ unfashionable mutual devotion. “You will draw the ridicule of the whole world upon you for being so particular,” she warned playfully.30 Similarly, when Elizabeth Robinson wanted to compliment the Duchess of Portland on her successful marriage, she chose to emphasize the Duke and Duchess’s singularity in remaining a loving couple after marriage: “I am sure my Lord Duke is a most miserable man who has found one person who has taken away that passion for change, which is the boast and happiness of so many people.”31 Women also used such humor in their correspondence with their own spouses. “I would not have thought you had been so dull to fix your mind on one thing, and one a wife, too,” wrote Polly Molesworth to her husband, “Fie! let me beg you will be more in fashion; indeed it is stiff and formal.”32 Frances Boscawen used similar language in 1756: ’tis not that I prefer you to solitude, but that I prefer you to all the world. A strange, old-fashioned sentiment this, to confess to a fine gentleman, but it escaped me, and you must not betray me. For a wife to prefer her husband’s company to all the world – ah fi, c’est de la dernière bourgeoisie. Gardez bien donc le secret.33

Her comment made explicit a connection that many scholars have seen as fundamental to the changing eighteenth century: the connection between ideals of romantic love in marriage and the “bourgeoisie.”34 But Mrs. Boscawen – wife of an admiral, related by blood and marriage to the peerage – was herself a member of the Quality and a participant in fashionable society; her joke was funny because she was not bourgeois. For these women, professing love for their husbands was both fundamental to their conceptions of marriage and a means of asserting virtue in contrast to the supposed values 30 Ann Granville to Lady Catherine Throckmorton, 26 September 1739, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 2: 62. 31 Elizabeth Robinson to Duchess of Portland, Hatch, 11 [?] 1738, in Montagu, ed., Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, 1: 38. 32 Polly Molesworth to John Molesworth, London, 13 October 1719, HMC Var. Coll. VIII, p. 281. Ironically, other correspondence in the collection indicates that Molesworth had an affair. 33 Frances Boscawen to Edward Boscawen, Hatchlands Park, 23 December 1756, in Cecil Aspinall-Oglander, ed., Admiral’s Wife: Being the Life and Letters of the Hon. Mrs. Edward Boscawen from 1719 to 1761 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1940), pp. 243–4. 34 See note 21 above.

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of fashionable society. The knowledge that they were participants in this society was, paradoxically, crucial to the success of their self-presentation. While conduct writers used the same language to eliminate women’s choices in behavior, choice was essential for these women; only by choosing to reject the beau monde could they dramatize the value of their love. We have seen that most writers advocated wifely subordination, although they portrayed the values they espoused as a transformation from marital tyranny to partnership. Just as women of quality could draw on the language of unfashionable love, so, too, they often echoed the conduct books’ language of subordination. They presented submission and obedience as intrinsic to their love – indeed, as proof of their love. Because of the association of love and submission, they did not question the inequalities of marriage. Love was obedience.35 After Lord Cowper praised his wife for voluntarily accepting “those Severe words concerning obedience, which the Church & Custom exacted from you,” she in turn responded that she was “farr from thinking it an exaction either of Church or custom,” since it was something “both my duty & inclination oblige me to.”36 When her husband entered the ministry, Lady Catherine Wheler was at pains to insist that she had objected to the plan only when “I was quite ignorant that he taught [sic] himself under any engagement to do it so that I thought myself at liberty to make my objections to it.”37 In 1752, Mary Delany debated whether she ought to suggest to her husband that they cancel their planned trip to England, because it would be inconvenient for him. “Were only duty concerned, ought I not to consider his interest, honour, and satisfaction?” she asked rhetorically, “but with the additional affection I have for him, is it possible for me to avoid making him a sacrifice on such an occasion?”38 The Countess of Strafford’s many protestations of her love were explicitly connected to the concept of obedience. Soon after their marriage, she wrote to the Earl that she was not taking her pin money from their agent yet, in order to show him that “your wife has som discreation.”39 Thus in spite of having the apparent means to financial independence so feared by conduct writers, she sought to prove her love by renouncing this independence. A few months later, she elaborated on the idea:

35 See Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, pp. 133–5, for a similar argument. 36 Lord Cowper to Lady Cowper, 24 September 1706, HRO D/EP F193; Lady Cowper to Lord Cowper, 26 September 1706, HRO D/EP F59. 37 Lady Catherine Wheler to her sister, Otterden Place, 25 July 1737, in Hastings Wheler, ed., Hastings Wheler Letters, pp. 150–1. 38 Mary Delany to Ann Dewes, Delville, 3 January 1752, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 3: 70–1. 39 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 11 December 1711, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 43r.

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Sence you are so good as to say I shall be Misstress of my self, I beg you’ll believe I shall never desire any thing but what is for your advantage & I’ll give you my word you shall allway’s be intirly master of me & every thought & inclination I have, & your word shall be A Law to me.40

Her letters to Strafford imply her sense of the ideal relationship between husband and wife, one based on benevolent but absolute male power. Thus, though we cannot know if Lady Strafford read other didactic works like the Spectator, her language mapped out precisely the sort of relationship envisioned by the conduct writers of the period. As these writers insisted, however, obedience did not imply mindless slavery. Like the rejection of fashionable society, it could be used to demonstrate the virtue and thus the moral authority of the wife professing it. Frances Boscawen compared herself to an ancient hero’s wife: Thus, I praise God, our hero will find his little Ithaca in a good state; his faithful Penelope, though void of suitors, and truly not much versed in work or web, yet equals Penelope of old in tenderness and faithful attachment to her dear Lord!41

Elizabeth Montagu frequently referred to her marriage in terms that explicitly recognized her duty to obey her husband’s wishes, even if she could not (or chose not to) conceal her bitterness at the results. In 1755 she wrote to a friend that she hoped soon to return to London from the lonely countryside, “but as Mr. Montagu has an undoubted right to choose what place he shall be in, I feel it most fit and proper to sit here to listen to the winter’s wind all day, and the hooting of owls all the evening.”42 Similarly, when Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was looking for a house she and her husband could rent, she insisted that she did not want to make the final decision in spite of his suggestion that she do so – “Thô I am gratefull, as I ought to be, for your goodnesse in leaving me my choice, which I shall allways remember with an unfeign’d sense of it.”43 What conduct writers did not envision were the surprising liberties that the discourse of love and obedience might afford. These authors sought to create a woman who was completely transparent, unable to manipulate others through disguise of her thoughts or motives. There is no room in these works for conscious self-fashioning, since the female reader was told that the

40

Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 25 March 1712, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 111r. 41 Frances Boscawen to Edward Boscawen, 1 August 1755, in Aspinall-Oglander, ed., Admiral’s Wife, p. 188. 42 Elizabeth Montagu to Gilbert West, 16 October 1755, in Montagu, ed., Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, 3: 338. 43 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Edward Wortley, York, 22 August [1713], in Halsband, ed., Complete Letters, 1: 195. 83

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instructions given simply reflected what nature intended. But in practice, although the language of obedience explicitly acknowledged the hierarchy of power between husband and wife, women could exploit that hierarchy for their own purposes. Motherhood offered a particularly strong opportunity for such strategic manipulation. Elizabeth Harley used fears about her pregnancy to persuade her husband to come home from London, telling him, “I do grow very uneasey & very malincoly; I do not think I shall go out my time; I hope you will cum down befor I ly in or else it will be an great troubel to me.”44 This is not to suggest that her fears were feigned, but to show that her pregnancy gave her a justification she might not otherwise have had to ask to see her husband. Because her mother had died in childbed, Lady Anne Strafford was particularly nervous when she was expecting her first child. One of Anne’s most important requests was that a well-known physician, Hugh Chamberlen, be present for the birth despite the great expense it would entail. The pressure to hire the doctor continued over a series of letters to Strafford in early 1713, but the initial request is particularly revealing. According to her mother-in-law, Anne had asked: that she may it being her first, & her mother dying in childbed, have Docter Chamberlin in the hous when she is in Labour. Its what Lady Roysten [Anne’s grandmother] & she both desiers. Indeed my Lady Strafford shed many tears this day when she desiered me to speak to you for him. I beg you wil not tel her what I say but only that I writ to desier she might have him & that you will Lett her have him, as I told her I was sure you would.45

By emphasizing Anne’s fears and her emotional weakness, displayed through her tears, Lady Wentworth appealed to Lord Strafford’s sense of honor and his role as patriarchal protector of his family. Even that most submissive of wives, Frances Boscawen, sometimes used her role as mother to justify disregarding her husband’s wishes. She wrote to him in 1747, shortly after he had left on an expedition to the Indies, that the children would be her “sole care and study.” But she went on to add that she would not ask him for any orders in this area, 44

Elizabeth Harley to Robert Harley, Brampton, 30 April 1689, BL Add. MS 70238. Lady Isabella Wentworth to Lord Strafford, 23 January [1712/13], BL Add. MS 22225, fol. 352r–352v. On Chamberlen, see Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, pp. 153, 318; Adrian Wilson, The Making of Man-Midwifery: Childbirth in England, 1660–1760 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 53–7; Randolph Trumbach, The Rise of the Egalitarian Family: Aristocratic Kinship and Domestic Relations in Eighteenth-Century England (New York: Academic Press, 1978), pp. 180–1. On the growing use of male doctors, see Wilson, Making of Man-Midwifery; Judith Schneid Lewis, In the Family Way: Childbearing in the British Aristocracy, 1760–1860 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986), ch. 3; Hilda Smith, “Gynecology and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England,” in Liberating Women’s History: Theoretical and Critical Essays, ed. Berenice A. Carroll (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1976), pp. 105–14. 45

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as whether, if one has the Smallpox, I should put away the others, etc., for I reckon that in all these cases one’s conduct must chiefly depend sur la conjuncture, and therefore ’tis impossible to take any resolutions beforehand. Let it suffice that all my faculties and studies will have for aim the benefit of these dear children.46

Although her letter implied that she might have asked him for advice had it been practicable, its emphasis was on her ability to manage without him. When a servant did get smallpox while Admiral Boscawen was away a year later, Frances wrote to him only after she had dealt with the problem and ensured that her children were unaffected. Later she explained that though “Your fortitude and strength of mind would enable you to struggle with it much better than I, poor wretch, could do,” she had chosen not to worry him when he could do nothing to help.47 Here her appeal to his masculine virtues of courage and reason softened the impact of her actual decision, which had been to keep him uninformed of a potentially life-threatening danger to their children. Such strategies worked for other women as well. In 1718, the Countess of Nottingham gently complained to her husband about his repeated requests that she come to London, “which I ought alwayes to obey, but the thoughts of leaving my poor Deare Girles is very greavous.”48 While she did not directly oppose her husband, she indirectly suggested that his demands were unreasonable, and opposed her duty as a mother against her duty as a wife. Another particularly clear example can be seen in the Countess of Sunderland’s provisions for her children in the event of her death.49 In a letter to her husband dated 1713 but not, apparently, opened until after she died in 1716, Lady Sunderland gave detailed instructions that showed her fears for the children’s future in the event of Lord Sunderland’s remarriage. First she begged him to control his spendthrift leanings and to save some money to provide for them. She then went on to ask, “as to my Children pray Gett my Mother the D[uchess] of Marlborough to take care of the Girles and if I have any boys to litle to go to school, for to be Left to servants is very bad for Children and a man cant take the care of litle Children that a woman can.” Finally, she said simply, “don’t be as careless of the dear children as when you relied on me to take care of ’em but lett ’em be your care tho’ you

46

Frances Boscawen to Edward Boscawen, Boxley, 19 October 1747, in AspinallOglander, ed., Admiral’s Wife, p. 54. 47 Frances Boscawen to Edward Boscawen, Englefield Green, 6 September 1748, in Aspinall-Oglander, ed., Admiral’s Wife, pp. 107–8. 48 Quoted in Pearl Finch, History of Burley-on-the-Hill Rutland. With a Short Account of the Owners and Extracts from their Correspondence and Catalogue of the Contents of the House, vol. 1 (London: John Bale, Sons & Danielsson, Ltd., 1901), p. 206. 49 She was weakened by a difficult birth in 1714 and died of septicemia following a bloodletting for pleurisy in 1716; see Frances Harris, A Passion for Government: The Life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 199, 210. 85

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should marry again, for your wife may rong ’em, when you don’t Mind it.”50 Such straightforward reflections on his improvidence, his lack of interest in his children, and the dangers of remarriage would have been impossible had she not intended this to be spoken with the authority of the dead. But her emphasis on maternal care echoed the remarks of other women. As these examples show, the language of love and obedience even allowed wives to find fault with their husbands. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu frequently sent her husband advice regarding his political career in the early years of her marriage, but carefully couched her most severe criticism in the language of the loving wife. After complaining about his hesitation to take a place in the government, for instance, she concluded that “I realy do [write] without any consideration but that of your figure and Reputation, which is a thousand times dearer to me than Splendor, Money etc.”51 In 1739, the Duchess of Newcastle similarly tried to mitigate her criticism by insisting to her husband, “I have no expectation from this letter, but that you should see the reasonableness, of my trouble, and o’ course not be displeas’d with me for shewing it.”52 There is no way of knowing the extent to which this rhetoric was an act of conscious strategy. What is certain, however, is that women could find some freedom within their acceptance of their own subordination. The languages of love and obedience were so strongly associated that the best way to express their love was in expressing their obedience; and the most effective way to question the authority of their husbands on specific occasions was by reaffirming their commitment to this authority in general. Despite the best efforts of eighteenth-century didactic writers to create a strict division between loving marriages and the mercenary unions of the beau monde, such efforts could never be entirely successful. Perhaps there were indeed some people who avoided fashionable life as determinedly as they sought loving partnerships; but we must recognize the appeal and utility that the conduct books’ view of marriage held for women of quality as well as those excluded from the elite. Husbandly authority was not supposed to be arbitrary or abusive. But what would happen if one or both spouses perceived a failure on the part of the other to live up to the obligations of marriage?

Marital breakdown The women discussed above portrayed the ideal relationship of wife to husband as one of simultaneous love and subordination. This perception 50

Countess of Sunderland to Earl of Sunderland, Althorp, 9 September 1713, BL Add. MS 61655, fol. 40r–40v. 51 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Edward Wortley, [c. 12 October 1714], in Halsband, ed., Complete Letters, 1: 231. 52 Duchess of Newcastle to Duke of Newcastle, Claremont, 4 September 1739, BL Add. MS 33073, fol. 134. 86

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pervaded their correspondence, and it provided the framework through which they explained their actions. Obviously, this did not mean that they were unable to contest or expand the paradigm of husband–wife power relations. But it did create a structure that remained fundamentally unquestioned and unquestionable. The strength of this paradigm becomes clear when we look at a case of marital breakdown within the Quality. As we saw in Chapter 1, women faced enormous pressure to remain in marriages and submit to their husbands no matter how unpleasant their situation. The conduct books’ ideology of marriage was thus tested to its limits in cases of marital breakdown and formal separation, when both parties sought to present an image of themselves as injured victims who had faithfully adhered to accepted norms of behavior. This section will focus on one such case, the collapse of Henrietta and Charles Howard’s marriage. Separation by private deed, which was the method used in the case dealt with here, was the first resort of those couples with any social standing who could no longer live together. Such a settlement, although not enforceable at common law, had the advantage of keeping the separation out of the courts and therefore as much as possible out of the public eye.53 But even separation carried with it huge social as well as economic costs. The pressure to remain in an unhappy marriage was often overwhelming. Here I will discuss one instance of a woman who did choose a formal separation, and who (unlike most such women) survived the dissolution of her marriage with her social and financial standing intact. By looking at how she and her husband positioned themselves during their many years of acrimonious dispute, we will be able to see how both parties manipulated the ideological language surrounding marriage. Early in 1706, at about the age of eighteen, Henrietta Hobart married Charles Howard, a man described by one contemporary as “a wrong-headed, ill-tempered, obstinate, drunken, extravagant, brutal younger brother of the Earl of Suffolk’s family.”54 Neither partner brought a great fortune, and the couple soon ran into financial troubles. After a stint in Hanover seeking the favor of the future George I, they returned to England around the time

53

Lawrence Stone, Road to Divorce: England 1530–1987 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 149–52, 159–68, 191–206, 231–246, 309–322; and see the case studies in Lawrence Stone, Broken Lives: Separation and Divorce in England 1660–1857 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), which also provides a concise summary of the various ways of ending a marriage. 54 Romney Sedgwick, ed. Lord Hervey’s Memoirs: Edited from a Copy of the Original Manuscript in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle (London: William Kimber, 1952), p. 40. Information in this paragraph comes from Lewis Melville, Lady Suffolk and her Circle (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1924), ch. 10; J. W. Croker, ed., Letters to and from Henrietta, Countess of Suffolk, and her Second Husband, the Hon. George Berkeley; from 1712 to 1767, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1824); and internal evidence from the manuscripts discussed below. 87

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of his accession in 1715 little better off than before, despite receiving court posts (Charles as Groom of the Bedchamber to the King, and Henrietta as Woman of the Bedchamber to the Princess of Wales). The marriage then began to go spectacularly wrong. Henrietta blamed her husband for dissipating her fortune as well as his own.55 Moreover, at some point soon after gaining her new court post, she became the Prince of Wales’s mistress, although she was so discreet in this role that a few observers refused to believe that any sexual relationship existed.56 She began spending most of her time at her lodgings in the royal palace. Trapped in a marriage to a man she despised, and desperate for a way out, in August 1716 Henrietta sat down to try to come to grips with the situation in which she found herself. The result was the following document, a remarkable record of one woman’s reflections on the obligations and rights of marriage: What is the Marriage Vow? A Solemn Contract where two engage. The Woman promises Duty, affection, and Obedience to the mans commands; to Guard that Share of his Honour reposed in her keeping. what is his part? to guide, to protect, to support and Govern with mildness. have I perform’d my part? in word and deed. how has [Charles] answer’d his? in no one Article. how Guided? to Evil; how protected or Suported me? left distitute wanting the common necessarys of life; not always from Misfortunes, but from Choice. what (from justice as well as from humanity nay even from his vows) ought to have been mine, employ’d to gratifie his passions. how Govern’d? with Tyranny; with Cruelty, my life in Danger. then am not I free? all other Engagements cease to bind, if either contracting party’s fail in their parts. Self presevation [sic] is the first law of Nature, are Married Women then, the only part of human Nature that must not follow it? are they expected to act upon higher Principles of Relegion and honour than any other part of the Creation? if they have Superiour Sense, Superiour fortitude and reason, then why a Slave to what’s inferiour to them? How vain, how trifling is my reasoning? look round and see how few of my Sex are intyttled to govern, look on my self; consider myself and I shall soon percieve it is not I that am Superiour but as I reflect on one who is indeed inferiour to all Mankind. how dangerous is Power in women’s hands? do I know so many Miserable Wives from Mans Tyranick Power as I know unhappy and rediculous

55 This could be a justifiable complaint in spite of the wife’s lack of common-law property rights, since two-thirds of her £6000 portion was supposed to be set aside in the purchase of land, the interest from which was to be her separate estate. She also retained the right to will away the property if he died first: Marriage settlement of Henrietta Hobart and Charles Howard, 26 February 1705[/6], Norfolk Record Office (NRO) MS 22953 Z76 (Hobart). 56 For one such skeptic, see Lord Egmont’s diary entry, 16 November 1734, HMC Egmont Diary II, pp. 133–4. But there can be little doubt that the affair was real; in addition to the gossip of contemporaries like Lord Hervey, there is the large financial settlement made by the Prince on Mrs. Howard, referred to below.

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Husbands only made so by too much indulgence; nay do I know one Single instance where great tenderness if attended with Submision to a Womans will, is not unfortunate to the Husband either in his honour, his Quiet, or his fortune? then own the power justly placed however I am the suffered [sic]. But still I must believe I am free. what do I propose from this freedom? to hate the man I did before dispise. wou’d I proclam my missery, my shame? wou’d I revenge my wrongs? the first gives pity or Contempt but no redress. The Second not in my power without involving my Self, his honour now is mine: had I none before I married? can I devide them? now loose his, and keep my own?57

In this memorandum, Henrietta debated with herself the justice of leaving her husband, whom she accused of exercising “Tyranny.” She argued that he had violated every rule governing his marital responsibilities, yet she could not persuade herself that this tyranny meant that her subjection to him was inherently unjust. I have quoted the document in its entirety because it reveals a woman engaging in the most self-conscious possible analysis of her role as a wife. Although Henrietta was looking for a way out of her marriage and seems to have been writing only for herself, this passage demonstrates that she could not simply ignore conventions of wifely obedience and feminine submission. In fact, she saw those conventions as largely justified. Henrietta defined the marriage vow as a contract in which each party has responsibilities: the wife must love and obey her husband, and the husband must offer his wife protection and good government. She claimed to have fulfilled her part of the contract “in word and deed,” while her husband had failed in every respect. Because he had broken his part of the contract and governed tyrannically, she went on, she was under no obligation to honor her part any further. It was unfair for married women to be the only people prohibited from obeying “the first law of Nature,” self-preservation. But immediately she went on to contradict herself. There was far less danger from most husbands’ tyranny than from wives’. Men thus deserved their power – “but still I must believe I am free.” Nevertheless, she admitted she could gain little from asserting her freedom to escape from her marriage. She could either win “pity or Contempt” by publicizing her situation, or she could seek revenge, which would impugn her own honor as well as her husband’s, since “his honour now is mine.” She was thus left with seemingly intractable questions: did she have any honor of her own? Could she separate her honor from her husband’s? Here Henrietta laid out the arguments against the path she eventually chose, and restated the arguments for wifely submission that

57

Henrietta Howard, personal memorandum, 29 August 1716, BL Add. MS 22627, fol. 13r–13v. This is the entirety of the piece; I have inserted paragraph breaks for clarity. Henrietta appears to have made some minor revisions for rhetorical effect, so it is possible that she planned to distribute it to a wider audience at some point, but there is no evidence that she did so, and its abrupt ending suggests that she used it primarily as a thought piece. Charles’s name appears in code in the manuscript. 89

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dominated the public discourse. Yet by the end of 1717 she had moved out of Charles’s house altogether and established permanent residence at her royal lodgings, refusing to return when her husband demanded that she do so.58 Her themes in this passage – of obedience, self-preservation, honor, and reputation – framed her construction of events throughout her prolonged battle with Charles. They did so because they also formed the framework of a widely accepted vision of marriage, a vision articulated in its most coherent form in the conduct literature. One reason for the difficulty in ascertaining the circumstances leading up to the separation comes from having to rely on both the Howards’ retrospective statements about the background to their marital breakdown. But the survival of their many letters enables us, if not to establish the facts of the case, to analyze the arguments each saw as most convincing, and the issues they saw as most significant. Henrietta consistently represented herself as obeying her husband’s wishes until they simply became impossible to follow. Early in their conflict, she wrote to him that she had obeyed his orders so far, including his most recent demand that she remove her clothing from their residence. Thus she represented this clear mark of the breach between them as entirely his responsibility. Apologizing for some harsh words she had used, she asked, “with the greatest Submission,” that he think of how frightening the prospect of returning to the misery of their earlier life together must be, but she added that “nothing shall dispense me from having the greatest respect for ever [sic] thing that may concern you.”59 Shortly afterward, she again insisted that she had simply been obeying his orders in leaving him after he had explicitly told her that he would no longer consider her his wife. She defended her decision to remain in the service of the Princess of Wales (and thus under royal protection) by arguing that Charles “had so expressly Abandon’d me and dismiss’d me from living any more with you.”60 By asserting that he had forced her out, rather than her abandoning him, she effectively claimed that her loyalties to him had ended. Her position thus echoed, with a subtle but important difference, the arguments she had made

58

Henrietta apparently took advantage of the opportunity provided when the King turned out the Prince of Wales and his household from St. James’s Palace, and left along with the household. In 1727, however, she claimed that it had been nine years since he had ordered her to remove her belongings from their residence, so it is possible that the separation took place in 1718. Henrietta Howard to Charles Howard, 15 May 1727, BL Add. MS 22627, fol. 37r. 59 Henrietta Howard to Charles Howard, [c. 1717], BL Add. MS 22627, fol. 16r–16v. Henrietta’s letters in the correspondence that follows are drafts of letters she sent to her husband. On women’s need to portray themselves as passive victims in legal disputes with their husbands, see Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, p. 133; Margaret Hunt, “Wife Beating, Domesticity, and Women’s Independence in EighteenthCentury London,” Gender and History 4 (1992): 10–33. 60 Henrietta Howard to Charles Howard, [c. April 1718], BL Add. MS 22627, fol. 18r. 90

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Image not available

Figure 4 Henrietta, Countess of Suffolk. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. Shelfmark G 2125. Frontispiece to Volume 1 of J. W. Croker, ed., Letters to and from Henrietta, Countess of Suffolk, and her Second Husband, the Hon. George Berkeley; from 1712 to 1767, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1824). Shown here dressed for a masquerade, Henrietta Howard survived a lengthy and bitter dispute with her husband thanks to her ability to play the submissive wife while asserting her independence. 91

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in her earlier memorandum. Whereas there she discussed marriage as a contract that could be broken, here she implied that he had abdicated his authority; the language of contract had vanished. As the dispute dragged on, Henrietta shifted her arguments yet again, seeking to exploit the conflicting allegiances demanded by the early modern ideologies of hierarchy and deference. She insisted that she had chosen to remain with the Princess, in spite of her husband’s orders to return to him, out of her sense of obedience to royalty, a higher form of obedience than that she owed her husband.61 Charles did not readily accept such ideas. In reply he complained that she had no right to exploit her duty to the Princess: “this Argument, seems a little too high Strain’d in Opposition to your Marriage Duty, and is A Doctrine, that I believe, neither Sense, Religion, or common honesty, will Justifie.”62 On the contrary, he blamed her behavior on “the folly I committed, in makeing you so Independent on [sic] me,” referring to his claims that he had been too financially generous.63 He thus turned her argument on its head, asserting that, far from being tyrannical, he had exercised too little authority. That Charles’s claims could carry weight is suggested by Henrietta’s reasoning in her private memorandum discussing the dangers of wifely power. In response, she continued to insist that she had been an obedient wife, thus putting the onus on him to demonstrate that he had done his part as a husband. She was surprised, she wrote, that he would suggest she had defied him when he knew full well she had removed her belongings from his residence “in obedience to your own commands communicated to me . . . with the same breath that you had nothing more to say to me.”64 This stance was essential because it got her out of the double bind she had created in the memorandum – this way there was no need to defy his authority openly, as her theories of marital contract and self-preservation had required. It is interesting that Henrietta ultimately retreated from contract theory to justify her behavior. For a member of an elite whose social authority was based 61 Henrietta Howard to Charles Howard, 15 May 1727, BL Add. MS 22627, fol. 37r. In the sixteenth century Lady Elizabeth Willoughby used a similar argument, when she said she could not promise to obey her husband lest he give her a command against the interests of the Queen whose servant she was. He was unimpressed, as was the female descendant who recorded the case in the early eighteenth century. Alice T. Friedman, House and Household in Elizabethan England: Wollaton Hall and the Willoughby Family (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 61–2; HMC Willoughby, p. 544. 62 Charles Howard to Henrietta Howard, St. James’s House, 18 May [1727], BL Add. MS 22627, fol. 39r. He, in turn, attempted to use the influence of both George I and the Archbishop of Canterbury to force Henrietta out of the Princess’s service: copy of a letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Princess of Wales, [1727], BL Add. MS 22627, fols. 28–9; Sedgwick, ed., Hervey’s Memoirs, pp. 135–7. 63 Charles Howard to Henrietta Howard, 22 February [?1727/8], BL Add. MS 22627, fol. 21r. 64 Henrietta Howard to Charles Howard, 25 May 1727, BL Add. MS 22627, fol. 40r.

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on concepts of natural hierarchy and inequality, perhaps the political implications of abandoning such concepts were too frightening. A striking characteristic of the Howards’ dispute was the way in which both husband and wife appealed to the opinion of “the world” to justify their actions, and clearly understood themselves to be addressing not simply each other but also a wider audience. Although the conduct writers used the discourse of femininity as a response to their fears about women’s public activities, in practice it is clear that the Howards did not draw such a clear distinction between the private realm of marriage and public life. Their conflict thus reveals a conception of marriage as a highly public institution, one that affected not just two individuals but larger issues of honor and reputation, despite their letters’ similarities to the language of conduct books which stressed marriage as an intimate union based on love between two people.65 One aspect of such public implications is visible in the response of a lawyer to Henrietta’s inquiries regarding her legal status and possibilities of defense. Remarking that “the particular esteem of the Law of England is, that a husband cannot misuse his wife, & that this Law will provide a certain Security against such Offenders,” the lawyer suggested that she should either get a nobleman – by which he probably meant one of her trustees – to mediate between them, or sue for divorce in the ecclesiastical court. He said that by suing on grounds of Charles’s adultery and “ill treatment” of her, they could list “every thing . . . that Fancy can suggest,” in order to intimidate him into abandoning the case rather than suffer the resulting damage to his reputation.66 In other words, suing in the ecclesiastical courts would enable her to publish Charles’s wrongdoings, and thus to harm his reputation. She appears to have begun planning for such an event, since she obtained depositions from two of her former landladies regarding this ill treatment even before receiving his letter.67 Moreover, Henrietta constantly maintained in her correspondence with her husband that she would be justified in public opinion, effectively daring him to do his worst, with her confidence that “the World must in Justice attribute it to the evil influence our Common Enemys

65 See Linda A. Pollock, “Living on the Stage of the World: The Concept of Privacy Among the Elite of Early Modern England,” in Rethinking Social History: English Society 1570–1920 and Its Interpretation, ed. Adrian Wilson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), p. 88. It is worth remembering that letters themselves were not considered the exclusive, private communication of one individual to another but were routinely passed around among family and acquaintances, and frequently published as well (with or without the author’s consent). 66 J. Darnall to Henrietta Howard, 23 December 1727, BL Add. MS 22627, fols. 19r–20r. 67 Depositions of Anne Hall and Anne Cell, 4 November 1727, BL Add. MS 22627, fols. 43–6. Interestingly, the abuse in this case consisted not of physical violence but of Mr. Howard’s demands that she perform household tasks she considered beneath her rank. The specifics of these depositions and their implications are discussed in Chapter 4.

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have unfortunatly obtained over you.”68 Here she avoided directly accusing him of evil intentions, applying instead the strategy commonly used in political debates when opposition members sought to avoid accusing the king of poor policy by blaming his evil advisers. In her private memorandum she had gestured toward Whig contract theory; now she used more traditional political rhetoric. Charles, in turn, responded that she was the one suffering a damaged reputation, and urged her to think of the shame she must bring upon her son “to hear the reproaches of your Publick defiance to me, and what the World will interpret the occasion of it.”69 As Henrietta did, he appealed to “the World” as ultimate arbiter of their dispute. Henrietta implied in response that he had already gone so far that it was impossible for them to be reconciled without further damage to his reputation, because it would simply heighten the shame of all his earlier behavior. She retorted that she had always been “dutiful submissive and patient” with him, while he had “in publick and private” said so many terrible things about her that it would be “more for your honour to be passive in this matter.”70 Turning against him his accusations that she had “neglected” him, she wrote that this was true in the sense that she had “these many years with the utmost resignation to my fate disregarded and neglected your continual obliquy and slander thrown on me in the most inveterate and publick manner too coarse to be repeated and too great to leave the world unamazed.”71 Again, a crucial part of her complaint rested on the fact that he had not merely insulted her but that he had done it in public, while she continued to portray herself as behaving with just the submissiveness demanded by didactic writers. She claimed to be so confident of her moral superiority that when her husband said he was getting his letters to her “attested,” she replied that if he planned “to make them publick I desire you will make mine part of the same book.”72 For both partners, appeals to “public” opinion formed a crucial component of their posturing. Their public consisted of their peers – the Quality who shared their social milieu of court and fashionable society – and Henrietta clearly believed that adherence to the rhetoric of wifely submission was the best way to make her case to that public. Henrietta’s confidence of vindication in the eyes of this public, and her lawyer’s willingness to suggest suing, imply as well the relative power that her status at court conferred. Despite the existence of the double standard and the widespread rumors of her adultery with the Prince of Wales, she and her lawyer apparently perceived Charles’s reputation to be at far greater risk

68

Henrietta Howard to Charles Howard, [?1727], BL Add. MS 22627, fol. 24r. Charles Howard to Henrietta Howard, 2 May [1727], BL Add. MS 22627, fol. 30r–30v. 70 Henrietta Howard to Charles Howard, [May 1727], BL Add. MS 22627, fol. 31r–31v. 71 Henrietta Howard to Charles Howard, 15 May 1727, BL Add. MS 22627, fol. 37v. 72 Henrietta Howard to Charles Howard, 25 May 1727, BL Add. MS 22627, fol. 42v. 69

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than her own. In his comment about what “the World” would see as the reason behind her defiance, Charles was probably referring to her affair with the Prince, but he obviously felt unable to mention it more overtly. Henrietta’s liaison (and the discretion with which she managed it) ironically provided her with social protection rather than damaging her reputation. She was thus in the highly unusual position of being a woman whose adulterous behavior actually benefited her in her marital conflict. But it did so only because her lover was royal and because she was extremely careful to avoid any open display of their relationship. Her publicly-known, yet private role as royal mistress affected the ways in which both she and her husband tried to determine public perceptions of their ostensibly private marriage. Her relationship with the Prince also helped her in more material ways, since in 1723 he settled on her about £11,500 worth of stock as well as other valuables, secured in trust from interference from her husband.73 Ultimately, Henrietta emerged the winner in their battles. Early in 1728, the Howards signed a formal separation agreement in which Charles received a lump sum of £6000, while she was guaranteed possession of all her personal estate, stocks, and emoluments from her court appointments.74 To add insult to injury, when Charles’s elder brother, the eighth Earl of Suffolk, died in 1731, he left everything he could – some £2000–£3000 – to Henrietta. The rest went to Charles as the heir and ninth Earl. Henrietta, still by law his wife, became Countess of Suffolk. She survived the separation with a secure income and a reputation unsullied by any formal legal proceedings – and she outlived her husband by over thirty years, building herself a new house in the fashionable Palladian style at Marble Hill in Twickenham, and eventually finding happiness in a second marriage.75

Conclusion Nowhere are potential conflicts between ideal and reality in early modern England more vivid than in marriage, an institution that carried enormous ideological weight. Eighteenth-century didactic writers relied on the sentimental marriage to sustain female subordination within a positive view of womankind. In a successful relationship, both parties explicitly accepted

73 Settlement in trust for Henrietta Howard, 12 March 1722 (i.e. 1723), NRO MS 22955 Z76 (Hobart). 74 Separation settlement of Henrietta and Charles Howard, 29 [sic] February 1727 (i.e. 1728), NRO MS 22956 Z76 (Hobart). 75 Melville, Lady Suffolk, p. 213; Countess of Pembroke to Mrs. Clayton, 1 July [1731], in Mrs. Thomson, ed., Memoirs of Viscountess Sundon, Mistress of the Robes to Queen Caroline, Consort of George II.; Including Letters from the Most Celebrated Persons of Her Time, 2 vols. (London: Henry Colburn, 1847), 1: 233. Marble Hill House still stands and is now an English Heritage property.

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marriage as a hierarchy of power that was nonetheless based on love. Love was supposed to serve as the guarantee that husbandly authority would not become tyrannical – a guarantee Henrietta Howard found all too flimsy. In the collapse of her marriage, we witness the inability of ideals to discipline human passions. Yet it is important to acknowledge the significance of such ideals. While it is undoubtedly true that in many circumstances wives wielded enormous authority and often experienced marriage as an equal partnership, we must also recognize the strength of the conduct literature’s values. Even for Mrs. Howard, who was willing to fight her husband for years and to risk her reputation by leaving him, these values remained central to her representation of marriage and of her own behavior. They were values that provided her with considerable freedom to maneuver. Yet we should remember their limitations as well; she asked herself whether wives could be superior to their husbands, but she rejected such an idea even in her personal memorandum. When Lady Mary Wortley Montagu claimed, in the letter quoted at the beginning of this chapter, that marriage was in a “forlorn state,” she was joking about a subject that many people found intensely serious. Lady Mary’s wit suggests that not everyone took the supposed crisis of marriage as seriously as the conduct writers. For such writers, fashionable women like her, with their flippant attitudes toward matrimony, embodied the problem of modern marriage. The solution to this problem was to confine women to the home, under the supervision of their husbands. Once we look beyond the literature to aristocratic women’s own correspondence, however, this picture immediately becomes more complex. If Lady Mary felt comfortable joking about the decline of marriage in a letter to her sister, she chose instead to emphasize her love and obedience when she wrote to her husband. Yet she did not feel that to do so meant she had to confine her interests to domestic matters. In fact, using this rhetoric, she offered her husband political advice and criticism. Within the early eighteenth-century Quality, moreover, the boundary between public and private was not clearly delineated. Lady Mary and her peers were women who lived in the public eye. Marriage was a crucial means of solidifying political alliances, and – as we will see in the following chapters – the London mansions and country estates in which the elite lived were as much venues for the public display of power as they were domestic retreats. In this climate, the choices women made in describing their marriages were never simply personal decisions.

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Household Management When Lady Cassandra Willoughby’s brother invited her in 1687 to live with him and oversee his household, she was happy to accept. “This proposal I was much delighted with,” she recalled three decades later, “thinking it would be no small pleasure for me to be M[ist]r[es]s of Wollaton, and to doe whatever I had a mind to, believing that such a government must make me perfectly happy.”1 Her comment that she looked forward to the “government” of Wollaton Hall, with its connotations of power, draws attention to the special place that household management held in the lives of many women. Moreover, her brother’s invitation reflects the common assumption that households required the presence of women; lacking a wife, he offered the job to his sister.2 Household management was widely accepted as the proper domain for female authority. Women’s domestic activities thus provide important information about their social roles. Some historians have seen the early eighteenth century as marking the end of many women’s productive capacity in the household; the rising middle class, so the argument goes, sought to demonstrate its new status through the leisure of its women.3 Inherent in this argument is the assumption that aristocratic women already occupied unproductive roles. But other scholars have drawn attention to the domestic realm as a site of power for women, even suggesting that for elite women, rank could overcome the handicap of gender as they exercised authority over their servants or other social subordinates.4 This awareness of the significance of the household 1

Quoted in Alice T. Friedman, House and Household in Elizabethan England: Wollaton Hall and the Willoughby Family (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 1. She remained with him in this capacity until she finally married the Duke of Chandos in 1713, at the age of 43. 2 This assumption similarly drove the tendency of widowers to remarry much more often than widows. While women were actively discouraged from seeking new husbands, men’s remarriage was seen as commonplace and even necessary. 3 Peter Earle, The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London, 1660–1730 (London: Methuen, 1989), pp. 159–73; Susan Amussen, An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988); Susan Amussen, “Gender, Family and the Social Order, 1560–1725,” in Order and Disorder in Early Modern England, ed. Anthony Fletcher and John Stevenson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 209; Alice Clark, Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century (1919; repr. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982). 4 Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); Anne Kugler, “Prescription, Culture, and Shaping 97

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for women has provided a useful counterbalance to historical assumptions that categorize domestic affairs as outside the realm of work. Yet it is also important to recognize the potential conflicts of authority in the household, a site increasingly privileged as women’s special domain and yet still fundamental to patriarchal power. Women’s “government” of their households was part of the implicit bargain offered them by conduct writers: total submission to their husbands in return for complete authority over the household. This bargain also presented a paradox, however. How should women balance such authority against their subservience to their husbands, given patriarchal society’s assumption that male power also stemmed from rule over a household? We can see the potential problem in the very language contemporaries used; “family” meant both those to whom one was related, and the broader group of people, including servants, within a household.5 Where did male power begin and female power end in the “family”? What happened if there were disputes between husbands and wives over household management? These issues affected the ways in which women of quality presented their household roles, as they shifted between words of submission and assertions of authority. Central to the household government promised by didactic writers were assumptions about class; the power granted women was in large part power over their servants.6 In aristocratic women’s letters regarding servants, therefore, we can witness their most basic ideas about relations between classes, and about their own position in society. Even within the accepted realm of domestic authority, women of quality had to cope with the tensions between older ideals of honor and liberality as a means of maintaining status, and a newer ideal emphasizing the virtues of economy and financial restraint in domestic affairs. This newer ideal coexisted with but did not replace the older values.7 Although it has often been seen as characterizing a new, middle-class ideology, it affected elite women as well, providing one of several

Identity: Lady Sarah Cowper (1644–1720)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1994); K. Hodgkin, “The Diary of Lady Anne Clifford: A Study of Class and Gender in the Seventeenth Century,” History Workshop Journal 19 (1985): 148–61; Friedman, House and Household, pp. 180–2. 5 Naomi Tadmor, “The Concept of the Household-Family in Eighteenth-Century England,” Past and Present 151 (1996): 111–40. 6 See Chapter 1 above. I use the term “class” here loosely. I am not suggesting that the Quality constituted “a class.” Instead, I use “class” in order to draw attention to the power relations embedded in the attitudes of elite women towards their social inferiors, especially their servants. I employ the concept in cases where a clear social divide and a sense of opposition or antagonism are present. But I am not arguing that members of the Quality always or exclusively defined themselves in opposition to a lower social group. 7 On the older traditions of liberality, see Felicity Heal, Hospitality in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), who recognizes the significance of such traditions for gentry women (especially pp. 181–3). 98

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competing conventions of proper female behavior. Throughout the early eighteenth century, the aristocratic household remained a site of political and social power, the physical manifestation of a family’s status. This was true both of country estates and of London residences, since the latter also provided spaces for social interaction, visible not only to those within but to passers-by looking in through the windows.8 Because of this visibility and accessibility to outsiders, aristocratic women had to recognize the public implications of apparently private decisions about household matters. Social status in early modern England was determined not only by birth but also by whether or not one worked. Women of quality were by definition members of the leisured elite. Nonetheless, they made important contributions to the functioning of the household and to its role as an indicator of social status – and, significantly, they understood many of their activities as “work.” Although there were certain areas in which women were more likely to defer to their husbands, and others where their primacy in decision-making was assumed, this rough sexual division of responsibility was extremely permeable and often simply did not apply to the actual workings of the household. At the same time, however, the powerful belief that such a sexual division of labor ought to exist influenced women’s behavior as well as their representations of their activities. This chapter will examine aristocratic women’s role in the household, and the ideologies of class and gender that underpinned their understanding and portrayal of their work.

“Women of business” It is worth remembering the financial stakes involved in household management for women of quality. Mary Delany had a budget of £600 a year for her household expenses but received extra to cover “the men’s wages, the liveries, the stables, wine cellar and garden, furniture and all repairs.” She expressed some concern to her sister that it might not be enough, though her husband had promised her more if needed.9 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s annual household expenditure in the mid-1720s ranged from £849 to £1140.10 In 8 James M. Rosenheim, The Emergence of a Ruling Order: English Landed Society 1650–1750 (London: Longman, 1998), pp. 91–7; John Brewer, “This, That and the Other: Public, Social and Private in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Shifting the Boundaries: Transformation of the Languages of Public and Private in the Eighteenth Century, ed. D. Castiglione and L. Sharpe (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1995), pp. 16–17. 9 Mary Delany to Ann Dewes, Delville, 23 December 1758, in Lady Llanover, ed., The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany: With Interesting Reminiscences of King George the Third and Queen Charlotte, 1st ser., 3 vols. (London: Richard Bentley, 1861–2), 3: 530. Italics original. 10 Isobel Grundy, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Comet of the Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 261; Robert Halsband, The Life of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), p. 124.

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1731 she spent £36 on plate as well as “three or four times that much for repairs and for furniture” in her London house.11 In 1742 the Duchess of Kent agreed with her husband’s heirs to give up her house in St. James’s Square in return for an annual income plus £1000 cash “towards furnishing another house” in London.12 Yet even this was mere pocket money for some of the really wealthy women of the aristocracy, whose expenses would increase proportionately. The ever-profligate Duchess of Leinster spent £150 on sheets, tablecloths, and other linen in 1762; she seemed to believe that her husband would not object to this expense since it covered only “useful and necessary things,” not “fine suits of damask linen.”13 When the Earl and Countess of Strafford bought an estate at Twickenham, it was entirely renovated under Lady Strafford’s direction. She spent more than £500 on the furnishings for her own room alone, while those for her grandmother (an occasional visitor) cost another £200.14 The rest of the house required everything from repainting to paneling rooms, upholstering chairs, and altering light fixtures, at proportionate costs.15 Each of these decisions was Lady Strafford’s, and the expenses were enormous. When her husband dared to make even a minor suggestion about chimney sconces, she simply dismissed him with the remark that his choice was “quite out of fashon [sic]” and purchased the ones she wanted.16 All of these women were involved in financial arrangements of high magnitude, even within the apparently confined realm of domestic furnishings. Decisions about the interior of a house could imply the expenditure of hundreds or thousands of pounds. Beyond the undoubted financial significance of these decisions, decor played an even more important role in helping aristocratic women to make claims about their family’s status as well as their wealth and taste. Household furnishings offered a physical representation of the family’s place in elite society in a variety of ways. Expensive consumer goods, of course, demon11

Grundy, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, p. 304. Her total household expenses in 1731 amounted to about £2000: ibid., p. 303. 12 Sophia, Duchess of Kent, to Count Bentinck, Old Windsor, 23 July 1742, BL Eg. MS 1721, fols. 54v–55r. 13 Quoted in Stella Tillyard, Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox, 1740–1832 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1994), p. 220. 14 Lady Isabella Wentworth to Earl of Strafford, 30 October [1711], BL Add. MS 22225, fol. 102r. 15 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, Bradenham, 28 October 1711, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 11; same to same, St. James’s Square, 15 July 1712, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 175; same to same, St. James’s Square, 23 July 1712, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 181; same to same, St. James’s Square, 29 August 1712, BL Add. MS 22226, fols. 203–4; same to same, 5 February 1711/12, BL Add. MS 22225, fol. 225. Lady Wentworth to Lord Strafford, 29 November [1711], BL Add. MS 22225, fols. 114–15; same to same, 19 May [1713], BL Add. MS 22225, fol. 288. 16 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 23 July 1712, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 181v. 100

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strated wealth, and women’s responsibility for such purchases meant that they exercised a major commercial influence. Merchants recognized the importance of female patronage for their wares. For instance, as the London Tradesman remarked disparagingly in 1747, mercers had to cater to the demands of a largely female clientele: the mercer “deals in silks, velvets, brocades and an innumerable Train of expensive Trifles, for the Ornament of the Fair Sex.”17 But mercers also sold the patterned fabrics for the upholstery and wall-hangings that were an essential part of elite household furnishings, and such matters reflected on the status of the entire family. Fashion and taste were also important considerations. But unfashionable goods could be equally important, representing lineage through their ancient provenance and conveying messages about a family’s stability. Some eighteenth-century women had important roles as patrons of artists as well as creating trends in interior decoration generally; they could thus enhance their own as well as their family’s public prestige through decisions about domestic matters.18 Furnishings provided subtler messages as well. Mary Pendarves noted approvingly that a newly-married couple’s house was “a very good one, and furnished with a mighty good taste,” which she thought boded well for the couple’s future happiness.19 Even small details could carry important implications. That quintessentially domestic art form, the conversation piece, not only provided a visual inventory of household goods but also made claims about lineage and power (see Figure 3, p. 79).20 Finally, much of the important work of politics was done not through formal procedures but in the informal venues of salons and drawing rooms; the enclosed spaces of the aristocratic household were therefore as much public as private.21 Household management began with the acquisition of the residence. Women of quality were frequently responsible for arranging the purchase or rental of residences, as well as landscaping and other changes to the property. The Duchess of Marlborough famously bought and rented an astonishing array of houses throughout her lifetime.22 Lady Anne Strafford was involved in finding a residence in London almost immediately after her marriage in 1711, but her inexperience did not deter her from expressing confidence in

17

Quoted in John Cornforth, “A Georgian Patchwork,” in The Fashioning and Functioning of the British Country House, ed. Gervase Jackson-Stops et al. (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1989), p. 163. 18 Trevor Lummis and Jan Marsh, The Woman’s Domain: Women and the English Country House (London: Viking, 1990), ch. 4, especially pp. 70–4. 19 Mary Pendarves to Ann Granville, 12 December 1724, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 1: 100–1. 20 Marcia Pointon, Hanging the Head: Portraiture and Social Formation in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 162–8. 21 Chapters 5 to 7 below. 22 See Frances Harris, A Passion for Government: The Life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), passim. 101

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her decisions as she wrote a series of letters to her husband describing her negotiations over a prospective house. She revealed a hard-headed business sense, bargaining over the cost of the furnishings within the house and expressing pleasure that conflicts between the current owner and his wife enabled her to make a better deal.23 Two years later, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was also looking for a house for herself and her husband, not in London but in the north of England. Her search required meetings and negotiations with many different potential landlords, and was often frustrated by her husband’s lack of response to her requests for opinions. Apparently he was content to allow her to assume all the responsibility.24 Widows were by default more financially independent than wives, and widowhood often meant a change of residence for a woman as her son or other heirs inherited the house she had shared with her husband. For some women, this loss provided an opportunity to demonstrate both their good taste and their sound financial management. When the Duchess of Kent was widowed in 1741, the Duke’s estate went to a niece’s husband and she moved to Old Windsor. Despite the misgivings of her family, who thought she was carried away by the beauty of its landscape, her purchase turned out to be entirely satisfactory. Her mother, the Countess of Portland, referred approvingly to the Duchess’s cleverness in choosing a relatively small estate and regulating her expenses, in marked contrast to the spendthrift habits of Lady Portland’s sons.25 The Duchess’s other acquaintances seem to have been equally impressed. Mary Delany, for instance, admired the “vast improvements” made at Old Windsor, including new walks and other landscaping changes.26 In 1754, Lady Jane Coke tried a variety of residences before purchasing one, which she immediately began to alter. “Sunbury begins to look gay, and I wish myself there,” she wrote with obvious enthusiasm, “I am building a large room and three servants’ rooms. Don’t you think it a great undertaking?”27

23 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, Cockpit, 16 October 1711, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 3; same to same, Cockpit, 19 October 1711, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 5; same to same, Bradenham, 5 November 1711, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 17r. For a memo of the final agreement, see BL Add. MS 63474, fol. 124. 24 Robert Halsband, ed., The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965–7), 1: 182–99 passim. Grundy, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, pp. 67–69. 25 Countess of Portland to William, Count Bentinck, Whitehall, 22 May [1741], BL Eg. MS 1715, fol. 237; same to same, Kensington, 4 September [1741], BL Eg. MS 1715, fol. 291. 26 Mary Delany to Ann Dewes, Bulstrode, 14 December 1743, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 2: 239. 27 Lady Jane Coke to Mary Eyre, 26 March 1755, in Mrs. Ambrose (i.e. Florence A. Monica) Rathborne, ed., Letters from Lady Jane Coke to her Friend Mrs. Eyre at Derby 1747–1758 (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., Ltd, 1899), p. 157.

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Once a house was purchased, it had to be furnished. Many women clearly assumed that they had the right to make these decisions without consulting husbands or fathers, especially when the men were away. While Lady Cassandra Willoughby’s brother was tied up in London with legal problems, she reported, “he employed me to buy such necessary furniture of all sorts as were wanted for Wollaton.”28 Abigail Harley simply made the changes she wanted without previous authorization, cheerfully informing her father, “I have made bold to make some alteration in the rome where my Cousin & I lye which I hope you will like, it has made both that & the Parlor chamber much more pleasant & convenient.”29 Nor did preparing a house as a residence involve only interior furnishings. The late seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth century was a major period of English estate building,30 and women were eager participants. When Sir George Lyttelton planned to rebuild his house at Hagley shortly after his father’s death in 1751, the friend whom he asked to draw up the plans initially proposed a gothic design. But Lady Lyttelton objected, and she prevailed in choosing “the Italian style” as well as in many other details.31 Lady Mary Hervey claimed to have designed her house entirely by herself, proudly describing herself as sitting surrounded by plans, compass, and ruler while waiting for her builder to arrive to execute her designs.32 When Mary Delany moved to Ireland with her new husband, she also oversaw major renovations: “I have workmen of all sorts in the house – upholsterers, joiners, glaziers, and carpenters – and am obliged to watch them all, or their work would be but ill-finished.”33 Even a wife as self-consciously subservient as Frances Boscawen could exercise considerable discretion. Writing to her husband in 1748, she entered into a litany of changes she had made to her residence: My house is an hourly expense to me, as you may imagine. The job of repairing the sluices in the back houses, making the pump, etc., was £9, and now I am paving

28 Lady Cassandra Willoughby, The Continuation of the History of the Willoughby Family, ed. A. C. Wood (Windsor: University of Nottingham, 1958), p. 136. 29 Abigail Harley to Sir Edward Harley, 3 July 1698, BL Add. MS 70117. 30 Heather A. Clemenson, English Country Houses and Landed Estates (London: Croom Helm, 1982), p. 50; H. J. Habakkuk, “Daniel Finch, 2nd Earl of Nottingham: His House and Estate,” in Studies in Social History: A Tribute to G. M. Trevelyan, ed. J. H. Plumb (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1955), p. 141. 31 Maud Wyndham, Chronicles of the Eighteenth Century: Founded on the Correspondence of Sir Thomas Lyttelton and his Family, 2 vols. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1924), 2: 269. 32 Mary, Lady Hervey to Mr. Morris, London, 10 December 1747, in Letters of Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. With A Memoir, and Illustrative Notes (London: John Murray, 1821), pp. 111–12; same to same, Ickworth Park, 25 January 1748, in Letters of Lady Hervey, p. 117. 33 Mary Delany to Ann Dewes, Delville, 26 July 1744, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 2: 319.

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the street with broad stones, the vault underneath having threatened ’twould fall in, if we did not repair gutters worn between the pavement where the rain settled. Then, my furniture, which is now pretty complete, cost many a penny.34

Her use of the phrases “my house” and “my furniture” rather than “our” is significant; the house might legally belong to her husband, but she saw it as entirely her responsibility. And her domain of authority extended to repaving the street, hardly the stuff of conventional domesticity or of a leisured woman spending her days in indolence and luxury. This was a woman overseeing every aspect of the maintenance of her household and its environs. Such responsibilities were typical of many women of quality. Nor was women’s use of furnishing to express status confined to women reflecting male honor. For Henrietta Knight, improving the Warwickshire estate to which she had been banished by her estranged husband became a means of demonstrating her status and independence, against the stigma of her separation. Barrells was her “Arcadia,” a source of pride and a way of showing her taste after being forced out of fashionable London. According to her own account, Barrells was close to uninhabitable when she arrived, lacking doors, windows, and roof; a sympathetic relative described it as “that damned wet ditch she’s thrown into.”35 But as she “improved” it, she was happy to have visitors to her estate, and she spent years in correspondence with her friend William Shenstone debating various potential alterations, from the placement of neoclassical urns to the design and location of her summer house.36 Henrietta’s friend, the Duchess of Somerset, was similarly engrossed in landscaping alterations at her estate, Percy Lodge. After the Duke died, adding “Beauty or Conveniences” to Percy Lodge became a way to memorialize her husband’s generosity in having left her the property.37 Her perception of these activities as a form of memorial to her husband also suggests the ways in which women could understand the public implications of estate work. The Duchess did extensive work on her London residence as well, which Henrietta saw as a form of civic virtue: “Twenty or thirty thousand pounds laid out at Northumberland House, will be a kind of Roman vanity, and 34

Frances Boscawen to Edward Boscawen, Audley Street, 11 January 1748, in Cecil Aspinall-Oglander, ed., Admiral’s Wife: Being the Life and Letters of the Hon. Mrs. Edward Boscawen from 1719 to 1761 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1940), p. 72. 35 Seymour Cholmondeley to Countess of Hertford, Astle, 16 January [1739?], in Helen Sard Hughes, ed., The Gentle Hertford: Her Life and Letters (New York: Macmillan, 1940), p. 145; see also Henrietta Knight to Countess of Hertford, Barrells, 26 June 1742, in Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, pp. 152–3. 36 Henrietta’s use of landscaping receives further attention in Chapter 5. 37 Duchess of Somerset to Lady Luxborough, Percy Lodge, 31 December 1752, BL Add. MS 23728, fol. 41v; same to same, Percy Lodge, 15 May 1748, BL Add. MS 23728, fol. 25; see also same to same, Percy Lodge, 9 September 1750, BL Add. MS 23728, fol. 37. Henrietta Knight became Lady Luxborough when her estranged husband received an Irish barony in 1746. 104

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contribute to the beauty of that part of the city of London, and to the conveniency of the populace in particular, if the Strand is widened.”38 Mary Delany similarly praised friends for the “wonderful improvements” they made in building a new town on what had been wasteland. “It really is a noble undertaking. . . . The poor have reason to bless them,” she wrote.39 Such activities could be presented as public improvements, benefiting not only oneself but also those who lived in the same vicinity; aesthetics and status were inextricably linked. Yet if some women reveled in the public implications of purchasing and altering their estates, others felt much less comfortable. When Lady Isabella Wentworth recommended to her son that he purchase a house in St. James’s Square, she expressed her opinion somewhat defensively: “for all you Banter me, with saying I am a Nottable woman, about Buisnes, time was when next your self, none of your Famely can doe it better, or be more puncktewell in any then I was.”40 Edward Wortley allowed his wife to find them a place to live in 1713, but she was careful to insist that she held only his interests at heart. “I shall be easy in any place where your Affairs or your Pleasure makes it necessary for me to be,” she promised him, in one of several vain attempts to get him to assert a clear preference.41 Frances Boscawen expressed a similar tension thirty years later when she wrote to her husband about helping relatives to find a place to rent. She began by listing the reasons for renting the house, showing her awareness of practical details: Your brother Jack brought his lady to breakfast with me and to see a house which he and I had pitched upon, after having spent two mornings in the disagreeable employment of house-hunting. . . . A one-eyed room and several other faults it has, but then £100 a year, a pretty garden, stables for 6 horses, and 2 coachhouses, are you’ll grant, perfections.

As a woman experienced in the process of acquiring and furnishing a house, she offered valuable assistance to her in-laws. But she imagined her husband would be skeptical of her abilities: “Methinks I hear you whisper ‘je me moque,’ but I assure you I am grown a woman of business.” In order to play down her financial dealings, she stressed that she was busy “adding some little ornaments and directing the furniture, etc. . . . Taste I always pretended to and must own I shall be greatly disappointed if you do not approve that which 38

Lady Luxborough to William Shenstone, Barrells, 24 June 1749, in Letters Written by the Late Right Honourable Lady Luxborough, to William Shenstone, Esq. (London: J. Dodsley, 1775), p. 104. 39 Mary Delany to Ann Dewes, Mount Panther, 8 August 1758, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 3: 501–2. 40 Lady Wentworth to Thomas, Lord Raby (later Earl of Strafford), 30 November [1708], BL Add. MS 31143, fol. 235r. 41 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Edward Wortley, [c. 10 August 1713], in Halsband, ed., Complete Letters, 1: 194. 105

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I have displayed in Audley Street.”42 Taste and “little ornaments” fit more easily into the traditional feminine roles of domesticity and decoration. The acquisition and furnishing of their residences provided aristocratic women with an important bridge between the domestic, feminine realm and the public arena. Despite the frequent trivialization of female interest in domestic furnishings, many women of quality recognized the public implications of such activities, taking seriously their role in upholding elite status through their choices. The substantial growth of consumer goods available during this period, moreover, meant that the financial impact of their choices was greater than it had ever been before. The enormous amounts of money spent in this area reveal not only its importance to social status but also one way in which women could wield significant financial power both on an individual level and in society as a whole. Yet this power was fraught with complications, as the hesitation of women like Lady Wentworth and Mrs. Boscawen reveals.

Good credit: domestic economy and financial restraint If some women of quality felt uncomfortable about acknowledging the “business” of household management, many also struggled to reconcile the need to demonstrate wealth and status with the competing pressure to exercise financial restraint. Far from being an issue only for the middle and lower classes, limiting expenditure was an important concern for elite women as well. In part this was a question of common sense; even the wealthiest households had to maintain some bounds on expenses. But the growing influence of feminine domesticity brought with it an emphasis on economy that called into question the older aristocratic values of exuberant display and magnanimity. Because almost all property to which a married woman had access was legally her husband’s, didactic authors reminded their female readers that to overspend was literally to steal from their husbands. Bound up in the question of household expenditure were, therefore, issues of patriarchal power. Moreover, since this expenditure was part of an enormous web of credit and debt that affected a wide range of people, behaving with fiscal responsibility was also a matter of upholding honor in society as a whole.43 Aristocratic reputation thus seemed to require both liberality and economy. 42 Frances Boscawen to Edward Boscawen, 29 November 1748, in Aspinall-Oglander, ed., Admiral’s Wife, p. 129. 43 On the importance of credit to the national economy, see Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998); John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989); J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); N. McKendrick, J. Brewer,

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An emphasis on their financial restraint could prove especially attractive to women of quality facing threats to their status. After turning over almost complete financial control to her son, the Earl of Strafford, Lady Isabella Wentworth struggled to manage on £200 a year. Her frequent suggestions that she quit London to live “incognito” in the country were a way of suggesting that her desire to economize was thwarted only by her need to maintain the trappings of rank suitable to her son’s status. They were thus also an indirect form of pressure on him to be more generous, though in this she was rarely successful.44 Elizabeth Coke used similar rhetoric when her brother remarried. She immediately wrote to say that she would be moving out of his house, where she had been looking after his children. She promised to move to a place he authorized, adding, “it cannot be more private (with credit) than will suit my inclinations as well as my little income.”45 Lady Elizabeth Egerton, widow of the Bishop of Hereford, had to move after her husband’s death in order to economize. She wrote to her brother in 1761 that she would seek “the cheapest place” possible in London. Although she was pleased with the prospect of living near her children, she was disappointed that she could not afford a coach there: “I shall want that conveniency in London, but must submit contentedly to what is right.”46 Her financial retrenchment involved sacrificing marks of status, but she admitted she had not had a coach in the country for several years. She would only feel the want of it in London, where keeping a coach for visiting was an important symbol of rank.47 Her rhetoric, however, gave her an alternative way to assert status. She might not have the material status symbol, but she could claim moral superiority. These ideas were not confined to women on the margins of the Quality. Even much more financially secure women used the language of domestic economy, and many prided themselves on maintaining careful household accounts, often termed “housekeeping.”48 Lady Portland fought an ongoing and J. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), ch. 5; P. G. M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit 1688–1756 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1967). 44 Lady Wentworth’s husband died intestate, and there are no records of any arrangements for a jointure for her. PRO PROB 6/71: Administration of Sir William Wentworth, 23 October 1695. At some point she gave whatever estate she had up to her son in return for the £200 annuity. See BL Add. MS 22258, fol. 69 and passim, for receipts for the annuity, stating that these replace any jointure or the “thirds” she was entitled to from Sir William’s estate. 45 Elizabeth Coke to Thomas Coke, 22 October 1709, Historical Manuscripts Commission (HMC) Cowper III, p. 82. 46 Lady Elizabeth Ariana Egerton to Count Bentinck, Settrington, 3 August 1761, BL Eg. MS 1722, fols. 197v–98r. 47 See Susan E. Whyman, Sociability and Power in Late-Stuart England: The Cultural Worlds of the Verneys 1660–1720 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 100–7. 48 See, e.g., Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 19 February [1711/12], BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 298; Tillyard, Aristocrats, pp. 223–4. 107

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battle against her son’s profligacy, frequently suggesting that he follow her advice or that of his sister-in-law, both of whom were far superior to him in domestic management.49 Asking him to think seriously about his expenses, she wrote that she was unable to supply him with as much money as she would like, given her own financial circumstances. “I do hope all that I have writt to you, will be taken in the way I design, which I assure you is far from any pleasure, in finding fault, or to controul you,” she concluded.50 By emphasizing her own relative powerlessness she was able to mitigate the effects of her criticism, focusing attention on her maternal love and on his independence, while nonetheless emphasizing her own responsibility in contrast to his financial failure. On another occasion she remarked that she was retrenching still further because of new taxes and the high cost of goods, an explanation which she used to justify the smallness of her presents to her son’s family.51 She chose to prioritize the value of restraint over that of magnanimity. Not only was economizing useful in itself, but it was also seen as reflecting good moral character. In 1710 Lady Wentworth referred admiringly to a female acquaintance who had reduced her entourage from a coach with six horses and six footmen to a mere four footmen on the grounds that “soe many [as six] would but make them be envyed.”52 Reducing the number of servants (if not by very much) transmitted a public message, just as the presence of large numbers of servants did. Moreover, conspicuous use of servants to assert social status could backfire, making one “envyed.” Lady Jane Coke similarly described her house as “very neat and comfortable, which is all not only that I pretend to, but wish for, since I have long known magnificence never made happiness.”53 Even the chronically spendthrift Countess of Kildare periodically assured her husband that she was economizing where possible – though her efforts seemed to be confined mainly to cutting back on pastries or dabbling in dairy work.54 But for women as well as men, financial prudence was a mark of public, social responsibility. When Frances Boscawen sent her husband, an admiral, an account of her expenses in 1756, she wittily drew attention to the connections between public and private credit: 49

See, e.g., Lady Portland to Count Bentinck, Whitehall, 15 April [1740], BL Eg. MS 1715, fol. 118; same to same, Kensington, 11 August [1741], BL Eg. MS 1715, fol. 279. 50 Lady Portland to Count Bentinck, Whitehall, 24 February [n.y.], BL Eg. MS 1715, fol. 22r. See also same to same, Whitehall, 12 February 1740, BL Eg. MS 1715, fol. 95; same to same, Whitehall, 25 March [1740], BL Eg. MS 1715, fol. 111; same to same, Old Windsor, 18 July [1742], BL Eg. MS 1716, fol. 58; same to same, Whitehall, 18 January 1750/1, BL Eg. MS 1716, fol. 258. 51 Lady Portland to Count Bentinck, Whitehall, 29 [sic] February 1740, BL Eg. MS 1715, fol. 104r. 52 Lady Wentworth to Lord Raby, 6 March [1709/10], BL Add. MS 31143, fol. 464r–64v. 53 Lady Jane Coke to Mary Eyre, Saville Row, 21 August 1750, in Rathborne, ed., Letters from Lady Jane Coke, pp. 55–6. 54 Tillyard, Aristocrats, p. 65. 108

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As the taste of the times is to make strict enquiries into the conduct of an administration, the application of public money, etc., etc., I’m determined to be beforehand with any inspection of my conduct, and send you enclosed a faithful account how I have administered the money you left me.55

In another letter, she sent him a detailed explanation of her financial activities – which included depositing his income in the bank and overseeing its investment in stock – as well as listing her own expenditures. “But according to my father’s maxim,” she concluded, “I have spent as little as I could, consistent (I must add) with your gloire, for I have kept a very good house, and I have had abundance of people in it.”56 Using a word like “gloire” – which had its greatest currency in the seventeenth century and implied older values of military valor and display – reflected the tensions she faced in trying to combine economy with the tradition of elite liberality. As Mrs. Boscawen’s jocular remarks show, it was not always easy to reconcile the desire for good domestic management with other aristocratic values. While in the country with her father’s family, the Countess of Strafford assured her husband, she kept only one footman and a page. But she hired a second footman and a porter when in London, asserting her status on the public stage of England’s cosmopolitan center.57 Lady Luxborough had definite opinions on the issue, insisting to her friend William Shenstone that the ideals of liberality and strict household economy were incompatible: “you may be a good speculative œconomist for what I know; but I never met with a practical one in a soul where generosity and benevolence had a place, or to which a bright genius was joined.”58 But it was precisely a happy medium between these ideals that was emphasized by didactic authors, and many women of quality accepted the need for economy.59 Lady Luxborough herself

55

Frances Boscawen to Edward Boscawen, Hatchlands Park, 16 November 1756, in Aspinall-Oglander, ed., Admiral’s Wife, p. 228; see also same to same, Audley Street, 11 January 1748, in Aspinall-Oglander, ed., Admiral’s Wife, p. 72. 56 Frances Boscawen to Edward Boscawen, Alton, 15 October 1756, in AspinallOglander, ed., Admiral’s Wife, pp. 213–14. 57 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, Bradenham, 28 October 1711, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 12r. 58 Lady Luxborough to William Shenstone, Barrells, 28 April 1748, in Letters to Shenstone, p. 21. 59 On the term “œconomic” or “domestic œconomy” as referring generally to the good order of the household, see Lena Cowen Orlin, Private Matters and Public Culture in PostReformation England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 11; Carole Shammas, “Anglo-American Household Government in Comparative Perspective,” The William and Mary Quarterly 3rd series, 52, no. 1 (1995): 105. But from statements like Lady Luxborough’s it is clear that this term was being used at least some of the time in the eighteenth century to refer to “economy” in the more modern sense of the word as financial restraint. Domestic economy included a constellation of ideas, of which financial restraint was the keystone. 109

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had to bow to the exigencies of “forced œconomy” in declining some of the more elaborate possibilities in decorating her house; kept on a tight financial lead by her estranged husband, she was nonetheless constantly overspending and seeking new ways out of her debts.60 The argument in favor of economy was vividly expressed by Lord Luxborough in 1751 when responding to one of her money-raising proposals. It was not enough, he said, for her to cut back on a few costly meals; instead she must “reduce immediately the number of her Servants and Horses one half.” Liberality without a solid financial basis was “false credit”: Can it be for the Credit of any Person to drive with a Coach & six Horses, when the wages of the Servants who attend that Equipage are unpaid! Can it be for the Credit of any Person to entertain their neighbours with an elegant dinner, and the Butcher’s Bill unpaid! When this is so, The Butcher & the Servants give the entertainment, not the Lady at the upper end of the table, who assumes the false credit of it.61

Obviously Lord Luxborough had an ulterior motive in his complaints, since he was left paying for the debts she incurred; his invocation of the directives of didactic literature served strategic purposes just as it could for women. But he drew attention to the important issue of reputation and honor in his criticism of her “false credit,” the phrase itself relying on the double reference of “credit” to both reputation and debt.62 As Lord Luxborough’s comments implied, if domestic economy suggested feminine virtue, its absence was a sign of moral failing. Lady North complained about a neighbor who spent “a great deal” on her own residence but who never exchanged hospitality with any of her neighbors.63 The Countess of Hertford was scathing about her acquaintance, Lady Hume, whose marriage had broken up over her domination in financial matters. Lady Hume refused to allow her husband more than £2000 of her money, instead spending it on “low-bred West Indians.” She also made him get a house in London which she furnished extravagantly, and then she allowed him to be arrested rather than giving him any of her own money to pay their bills.64 The case highlights the possibility for women to retain considerable financial control after marriage (although it was rare for them to be able to exercise this

60 Lady Luxborough to William Shenstone, Barrells, 28 April 1748, in Letters to Shenstone, p. 22. 61 Lord Luxborough to Lady Luxborough, 19 February 1750/51, BL Add. MS 45889, fols. 62r–63v. 62 On the multiple meanings of “credit,” see Muldrew, Economy of Obligation. 63 Elizabeth, Lady North to her mother, Popplewick, [July? 1739], HMC Dartmouth III, p. 158. 64 Countess of Hertford to her son, 9 June 1744, in Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, pp. 322–3.

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control with such detrimental effects on their husbands), but Lady Hertford’s criticism reminds us that the social pressure against such behavior was intense. The notion of domestic economy could thus hold a dual attraction for many women of quality. It enabled them to portray themselves, particularly to their husbands, as living up to the feminine ideal. It also gave them a claim to one type of status when other marks of social distinction were unavailable. Yet, because of the demands on these women to use the household for displays of rank and wealth, the impulse toward economy was never straightforward. Instead, they constantly had to negotiate between two conflicting views of women’s roles, presenting themselves both as upholding their families’ status and as refraining from mere whimsical extravagance.

Mistress and servant If the question of economy brought out the conflicts between women’s desire to maintain social status and the glorification of domestic restraint, the direction of servants produced similar tensions. Although the number of servants under their management at any one time varied depending on individual rank as well as location (e.g. rented accommodation, court lodgings, or a country estate), women of quality often had to oversee an extensive staff. In 1693, for instance, the Earl and Countess of Nottingham’s household held a staff of twenty women and twenty-nine men.65 The Duke of Kingston was rumored to keep “three men cooks, an extrem good confectiner and . . . in all a hundred and ten in famely.”66 Carton, the estate of the Duke and Duchess of Leinster, housed vast numbers of specialized servants (there was a permanent staff of about a hundred, which could double or triple during large projects), on a scale aptly described by Stella Tillyard as “industrial rather than domestic.”67 Servants’ wages alone in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s household amounted to £232 in 1731, a considerable sum that covered residences in both London and Twickenham.68 Wages in the Earl of Bedford’s much larger household ran to £700 annually in the 1690s.69 Managing servants brought out women’s most basic assumptions about class. While the ideal model of the mistress–servant relationship was one of loving authority and cheerful obedience, in practice this relationship was

65

Habakkuk, “Daniel Finch,” p. 172. Lady Strafford to Countess of Huntingdon, Wentworth Castle, 26 August 1733, HMC Hastings III, p. 17. 67 Tillyard, Aristocrats, pp. 211–20; quotation p. 211. 68 Grundy, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, p. 303. 69 Gladys Scott Thomson, Life in a Noble Household 1641–1700 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1965), p. 124. 66

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often a site of conflict both between classes and within the elite. The eighteenth century saw a transformation in mistress–servant relations as the older, paternalistic model declined and was gradually replaced by a more impersonal, contractual relationship – a change that inevitably increased the tensions already present in relations between employers and servants.70 Many women continued to maintain a vision of an ideal relationship based on benevolent but absolute authority in return for servant loyalty, but this model often failed to reflect reality. Servants also frequently caused conflicts between husbands and wives. Interactions with servants provided women of quality with some of their greatest authority, as didactic authors promised, but these interactions were also often fraught with problems. Servants were essential status symbols in the aristocratic world of competitive display. When Lady Strafford wrote to her husband about hiring a new porter, she said that one candidate “was a sober honest man & cou’d write a good hand,” but he was so ugly that “you might as well have had a fatt monkey at your door.”71 Fashionable households required fashionablelooking servants. Even her mother-in-law Lady Wentworth, with her relatively small income, was concerned about questions of image in keeping servants. Discussing one coachman, she approved of his good care of the coach, his “genteel” wife, and the fact that he was “very cleen himself [and] in my Levery very handsom.”72 The gentility and physical attractiveness of her servants reflected her own status, just as the French parentage of a maid for Lady Strafford’s daughters counted in the maid’s favor.73 As Lady Strafford’s remarks about the porter incidentally reveal, women were frequently responsible for the hiring and firing of servants. These included not only domestic staff in the strict sense of the word, but also gardeners, builders, coachmen, and other workers who might appear to fall into a “masculine” realm. And in addition to hiring their own employees, women of quality played a central role in the networks of patronage and 70

Bridget Hill, Servants: English Domestics in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); Patty Seleski, “Women, Work and Cultural Change in Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century London,” in Popular Culture in England, c. 1500–1850, ed. Tim Harris (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), pp. 143–67. J. Jean Hecht, The Domestic Servant in Eighteenth-Century England (originally published as The Domestic Servant Class in Eighteenth-Century England, 1956; reprint, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), provides the classic account of eighteenth-century household structure, giving a breakdown of the ideal number of servants and their responsibilities. For approaches oriented more toward a social history of servants, see Hill as well as D. A. Kent, “Ubiquitous but Invisible: Female Domestic Servants in Mid-Eighteenth Century London,” History Workshop 28 (1989): 111–28. 71 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 14 January 1737/38, BL Add. MS 31145, fol. 224v. 72 Lady Wentworth to Lord Raby, 1 August [1710], BL Add. MS 31143, fol. 526v. 73 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 25 January 1736[/7], BL Add. MS 31145, fol. 172v. 112

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recommendation that maintained the circulation of servants in the fluid job market. They often fulfilled these roles within their own family; hiring servants from relatives or friends carried with it the benefit of tested loyalty and hard work. Lady Strafford agreed to take on one of her grandmother’s old servants after her grandmother’s death, since she was “very honest” as well as “mighty Carfull in Looking after Bed’s & all furniture in A house.”74 Lady Elizabeth Ramsden apologized to Lady Betty Hastings on one occasion for being unable to be specific about one cook’s character, since she could only remember that the cook had left to marry a groom. Still, she added brightly, “I fancy he will not give her much disturbance in service for I hear they are parted.”75 Looking for a tutor for her son in 1726, the Countess of Salisbury hoped to get information on a candidate’s “sobriety and deportment,” religious faith, “good temper,” and reliability.76 Mary Delany and her sister even plotted to hire and fire servants for their brother without his knowledge, confident that these were issues best left to women.77 Sometimes the networks of recommendation could be quite elaborate. In 1718 Jael Boscawen wrote to Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough to recommend a man as a servant; the man had been employed by a relative of Jael who had recently died, and Jael hoped to help him find a new place.78 Similarly, the Duchess herself wrote to her granddaughter, Lady Diana Russell, asking her to write a recommendation for a woman who was a relative of one of Sarah’s own servants. This network thus included Sarah, her granddaughter, Sarah’s servant, the servant’s relation, and the third party to whom Sarah hoped Lady Russell would write.79 Soon after her son’s marriage in 1711, Lady Wentworth was looking for a cook to work in the couple’s new household. She was optimistic at the end of October that she had found the perfect candidate: She has been bred a coock of a childe takse great delight in it, her father & twoe brothers wear great Coocks, s[he] has Leved in good playsis one was with Lord 74

Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, Hague, 24 November 1713, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 367v. 75 Lady Elizabeth Ramsden to Lady Betty Hastings, [n.d.], in George Hastings Wheler, ed., Hastings Wheler Family Letters [Part 2], 1704–1739 (Wakefield: West Yorkshire Printing Co. (privately printed), 1935), p. 62. 76 Anne, Countess of Salisbury to [?Lady Betty Hastings], Hatfield, 9 October 1726, in Hastings Wheler, ed., Hastings Wheler Letters, p. 77. 77 Mary Delany to Ann Dewes, Clarges Street, 22 March 1743/4, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 2: 283. 78 Jael Boscawen to Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, St. James’s Place, 19 June [1718], BL Add. MS 61441, fol. 131v. 79 Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough to Lady Diana Russell, 1 January 1733, in Gladys Scott Thomson, ed., Letters of a Grandmother 1732–1735: Being the Correspondence of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough with her Granddaughter Diana, Duchess of Bedford (London: Jonathan Cape, 1943), pp. 84–5. Significantly, the reason that the woman had lost her place was that her mistress’s son had fallen in love with her, and she was fired to prevent a misalliance. 113

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Colrain 2 years & half, she givs a very good acount of her self. my Ladys Clark of the Kitchin shall see her & inquier after her. . . . Mary that I helpt my Daughter to tels me of her.80

Lady Wentworth thus heard about the potential cook first through Mary, a servant of her daughter whom Lady Wentworth had helped to place. She had also spoken to the cook herself, taken references, and was now sending Lady Strafford’s clerk of the kitchen to make inquiries. Lady Strafford’s reaction, however, demonstrates the complexities of hiring: “I had A letter to day from lady Wentworth she send’s me word she has got me an extrodinary good Cook I hope she may prove so but my Lady is all goodness her Self and you know Somtimes thinks better of peaple then they desarve.”81 The network was helpful, but it was not a perfect system. The use of such networks for hiring servants sheds light on both women’s expectations of their servants and their frequent disappointments. Mistresses’ relationships with their employees varied widely, of course, but each woman held a vision of what that relationship ought to be, against which she measured both her own and her servants’ behavior. Frances Boscawen saw enough significance in a gift of pears from an elderly servant named Betty to repeat their exchange to her husband: “But why don’t you keep a few for yourself Betty? Don’t you love pears?” “Yes, my lady, I love pears, but I love you better.” This was truly the poor old creature’s answer. She often asks after our Brave Admiral, and when I told her yesterday you was well, would be home soon and stay here till Xmas, she gave a great jump for joy by the help of her broom.82

Mrs. Boscawen was pleased to send the gift of pears along to her husband, since to her it represented both an emotional bond with Betty and her success in managing the estate in his absence. There is, of course, no way of knowing whether Betty would agree. Many women of quality expressed their belief in reciprocal obligations between mistress and servant, which in its simplest form could consist of a good reference in return for good service. In 1697 Lady Giffard wrote to her niece that she hoped to be able to find another place for one of the servants she was letting go: “I never saw a greater diligence . . . nor is it possible for any body to have a be[tter] Servant.” The maid had “served me too Long & dus now too well to part with her till she is provided [with another job].”83 Lady 80

Lady Wentworth to Lord Strafford, 30 October [1711], BL Add. MS 22225, fols. 102v–103r. 81 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, Bradenham, 1 November 1711, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 15r. 82 Frances Boscawen to Edward Boscawen, Hatchlands Park, 4 October 1756, in AspinallOglander, ed., Admiral’s Wife, p. 208. 83 Martha, Lady Giffard to Lady Jane Berkeley (later Countess of Portland), 28 November [?1697], BL Eg. MS 1705A, fols. 15v–16r. 114

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Catherine Wheler worried that a wet nurse would be “very destitute” after the child she was nursing was weaned, so Lady Catherine proposed to hire the nurse herself to replace another servant who was about to leave. She thus combined practical and charitable interests.84 This sense of obligation also helps to explain the success, noted by Donna Andrew, of ex-servants and their families requesting charitable patronage from their former employers.85 Ideally, employers bestowed such benevolent paternalism in return for the obedience and loyalty of their underlings. Mistresses were supposed to ensure their servants’ physical and spiritual well-being.86 Lady Betty Hastings emphasized the importance of the ideal, as well as its obstacles, in a letter to her half-sister: You know that having a Religious, Regular, well ordered family has been one of the things my heart has most desired, and the many disappointments I have met in this way, has not, and I think never will, prevent my endeavouring of it, as I really look upon it to be my duty[,] for the order of a family if I mistake not has an influence on the minds’ [sic] and consequently on the better part of the several members of it.87

In 1752 the Duchess of Somerset expressed similar sentiments about her “family”: I have a regular and (I hope) a religious Family. My Woman thô she has not lived with me quite 5 Years had before lived three & twenty betwixt Lord Granthams & Lady Cowpers, My Housekeeper has been a Servant as long. The Person who takes in my Accounts, pays the Bills & overlooks the Men within Doors has been in the Family nineteen Years; & the other who has lived with us Ten, has the Care of my Stables & every thing without.88

Her comments combined two of the major characteristics considered important in servants – their morality and their loyalty. A lengthy tenure in 84

Lady Catherine Wheler to Lady Anne Hastings, Otterden, Kent, 10 July [1730], in Hastings Wheler, ed., Hastings Wheler Letters, p. 99. 85 Donna T. Andrew, “Noblesse Oblige: Female Charity in an Age of Sentiment,” in Early Modern Conceptions of Property, ed. John Brewer and Susan Staves (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 286. 86 Hecht, Domestic Servant, pp. 71–6, 96–100. Vickery, Gentleman’s Daughter, ch. 4, discusses the strong emotional investment that elite women could have in their servants, particularly in the female ones. See Anne Kugler, “Prescription, Culture, and Shaping Identity,” pp. 80–4, on Lady Sarah Cowper’s expectations regarding the servant–master hierarchy. 87 Lady Betty Hastings to Lady Anne Hastings, [n.d.], in Hastings Wheler, ed., Hastings Wheler Letters, p. 104. 88 Duchess of Somerset (formerly Countess of Hertford) to Lady Luxborough, Percy Lodge, 31 December 1752, BL Add. MS 23728, fols. 41v–42v; see also Countess of Hertford to her son, Percy Lodge, 6 May [1743], in Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, p. 256. 115

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a single household or among her acquaintances implied that her servants were trustworthy, and given the responsibilities she lists, trust was an essential component in good servant–mistress relations. According to Catherine Talbot, at least, the Duchess was successful in maintaining this ideal relationship. In a diary entry that characteristically compared the Duchess to Catherine’s favorite literary hero, Catherine wrote, “Her Servants attend on Her as Sir Charles Grandisons do on Him with looks of equal Respect & Delight.”89 In return for loyal service, mistresses provided a variety of rewards great and small in addition to salaries and references. When the Countess of Coningsby, traveling in Paris, heard that one of her servants was dying, she immediately sent word that she would pay for “poor Molly’s” medical care and funeral.90 For the marriage of one of her servants in 1752, Mary Delany “gave all the maidens and men new white ribbon favours, and we all marched and made a gallant show through the garden”; then Patrick Delany performed the ceremony. Afterwards everyone returned home, where the servants feasted on a dinner provided by Mary, of “as much beef, mutton, and pudding as they could devour” in the housekeeper’s room.91 Some women interceded on behalf of their servants in conflicts with male relations, sometimes implicitly aligning themselves with the servants in a position of subordination in order to appeal to the men’s sense of magnanimity. On one occasion Lady Wentworth wrote to her son, the Earl of Strafford, about a visit she had received from a former servant. The servant complained that “she did beleev she was the only body you had Left unpayd & that you was good to all the world but her.” Lady Wentworth enclosed a list of the debts, concluding, “when you have consedered it you will need noe other parswations but your Just & good nature which will be abov all the argements that can be yoused.”92 Within the letter she thus repeated the strategy used by the servant in their conversation; she called on Lord Strafford’s sense of honor and implied that it would be morally impossible to refuse the request. Such an alignment was possible because of the hierarchy of subordination present in conventional views not only of service but of gender.93 Yet women did not have to rely on this strategy. In 1753, for 89

Catherine Talbot, journal entry, 21 November [1753], BL Add. MS 46688, fols. 26v–27r. But see below, p. 119, for a less rosy picture. 90 Margaret, Countess of Coningsby to her sister, Paris, 15 October 1737, in Letters of Margaret, Countess of Coningsby, from France, in 1737–8 (Medio-Montanis: C. Gilmour (privately printed), 1842), p. 8; same to same, Paris, 29 October 1737, in Coningsby Letters, p. 9. 91 Mary Delany to Ann Dewes, [1752], in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 3: 100. 92 Lady Wentworth to Lord Strafford, 27 January [1712–13?], BL Add. MS 22225, fols. 218v–219v. See also same to same, 7 March [1711/12], BL Add. MS 22225, fol. 238r–38v. 93 For a similar discussion of the role of women in appealing for charity, see Andrew, “Noblesse Oblige,” p. 290. 116

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instance, Lady Harriot Limerick repeatedly criticized her brother for not paying the pension he had promised to an old servant, saying that she would not stop hounding him until he paid his debts of honor.94 While Lady Wentworth used the parallels between female subordination and social subordination, Lady Limerick simply appealed to ideas of honor that left the gender issues implicit. The final way in which women could help their employees was in a will, and many of them left legacies to their faithful servants. Money (either in lump sums or in regular payments) and clothing or lace were among the most common legacies. In a codicil to her will, Lady Strafford bequeathed £10 a year “to William Wright my Butler for the great care and attention he had for me in my illness, (if living with me at the time of my death).”95 It is likely that the codicil was written at the time of that illness, and her condition that William be living with her at the time of her death – a frequent one in such wills – reflected the importance given to servants’ loyalty. Facing her own mortality, Lady Betty Hastings’s thoughts turned to her devoted servant, Sarah Hole. She carefully set out legal arrangements for Sarah to receive the interest from a £2000 mortgage for life, as well as the right to bequeath £500 of it as she wished.96 Lady Elizabeth Spelman left one servant her “walnut tree cabinet together with the six leave screen,” along with money and clothing.97 Similarly, an early will of the Duchess of Kent specified not only legacies of money for servants but also “a silver milk pot” for one devoted woman.98 Her mother, Lady Portland, also left money for some servants but singled out “Mr Lock’s [sic] Works in three Volumes in folio” for Abraham Trembley, her grandsons’ former tutor.99 Specific legacies like these enabled women to show their gratitude for jobs well done, while simultaneously providing an incentive for the servants named to continue in their service. The mercenary aspects should not be overemphasized; gifts such as the furniture, milk pot, and Locke’s works, which usually supplemented legacies of money, suggest a thoughtful consideration of the recipient’s desires, with sentimental value 94

Lady Limerick to Count Bentinck, Dundalk, 1 January 1753, BL Eg. MS 1721, fols. 273–4. 95 Lady Strafford, will (copy), 26 January 1739/40, Add. Ch. 13647; codicils dated 29 March and 6 August 1754. The will was proved 8 October 1754: PRO PROB 11/811. Such gifts are common throughout the wills transcribed in Marcia Pointon, Strategies for Showing: Women, Possession, and Representation in English Visual Culture, 1665–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), Appendix, pp. 307–400. See in particular the wills of Lady Charlotte Scott (p. 355) and Lady Ann Paul (p. 361). 96 Lady Betty Hastings to Earl and Countess of Huntingdon, Ledstone, 6 December 1739, in Hastings Wheler, ed., Hastings Wheler Letters, p. 178. 97 Quoted in Pointon, Strategies for Showing, Appendix, p. 351. 98 Lady Sophia Bentinck, will, 17 June 1728, BL Eg. MS 1708, fols. 403–4. For her final will, see PRO PROB 11/762 (28 January 1745[/6]). 99 Lady Portland, will (copy), 23 February 1750[/1], BL. Eg. MS 1708, fol. 427v. The will was proved 20 April 1751: PRO PROB 11/787. 117

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outweighing the monetary gains. But the specificity of such gifts and their relative rarity suggest also that such close relationships were uncommon – maintaining power within the household also required maintaining social differences. Relations with servants were particularly fraught because of these conflicting goals: the desire to keep a distance from servants in order to preserve status, and the desire to foster human affection and mutual regard. Servants and mistresses could thus develop deep affection, but the boundaries of this relationship were navigated with difficulty. Years after growing up, Lady Hertford still wrote to her old governess as “my dear mother,” and offered her clothing to sell if she could get any money by it.100 Confident of her social position, she could afford to treat her social inferior with the “condescension” so highly valued by didactic authors writing about both gentlemen and ladies. As a newly-married woman, Lady Strafford was less secure: I can very Sinceirly tell you [she wrote to her husband] I spend no time so Agreeable as writing to you & hearing from you & looking after our Affairs of the house as farr as I am Capable. . . . there is som things I have order’d to be regulat’d against anothere week for I shall never agree to be impos’d on by my Servant’s to have the name of being good humour’d for as I’ll do what is fitting by them I’ll make them do so by me.101

Her comments reveal both her insecurity in establishing her new household, and the fact that she already had a sense of the appropriate relationship with her servants; her statement that she would do “what is fitting by them” and expect the same in return could have come straight out of a conduct book. But her mother-in-law, Lady Wentworth, was apparently subject to much criticism for her favoritism in treating her servants. In particular she was devoted to her personal maid, Sue, even eating at the same table with her. “Sue has been with me many years, soe this summer I have sett her at my Table when aloan, but if any body dyns, she never dus,” she wrote apologetically, “Susan is of a good famely . . . & I could not make her dyne hear with the plowmen, & I have noe mynd to part with her, for she is a very faithful sarvent.”102 Her defensive tone in this passage showed her sense of the impropriety involved, though it did not prevent her from continuing the practice. Good intentions could not guarantee a smooth relationship between mistress and servant. Even at the best of times, most women of quality apparently believed that servants required constant policing to counter what 100

Countess of Hertford to Mrs. Rothery, [n.d.], in Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, p. 29. Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 20 November 1711, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 25r. 102 Lady Wentworth to Lord Strafford, 23 June [1713], BL Add. MS 22225, fols. 307v–308r. 101

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the elite saw as the innate tendencies of their social inferiors toward immoral and even criminal behavior. This sense of moral distrust often undermined the mutually beneficial relationship seen by many aristocratic women as ideal. Moreover, there is evidence that the servants themselves often rejected this model of benevolent paternalism, taking advantage of the opportunities they had to resist their mistresses’ authority. Part of the reason why women relied so extensively on networks of information for hiring was that there was an enormous turnover in employment; servants gave notice, got fired, or simply ran away.103 Loyalty was rewarded in women’s wills because it was unusual. What appeared to them as idleness and immorality, however, can perhaps be interpreted as servants’ attempts to protect their own interests in a social structure that insisted on their constant subordination. Maintaining their authority was a problem for many mistresses, and the balance between discipline and warmth was always precarious. In 1737 the Countess of Coningsby arranged for one of her servants to work as a journeywoman rather than go to London as the young woman wished. “She is so pert, (and as I have been told, proud,) that she may be ruined if she goes to London,” commented Lady Coningsby brusquely, in terms that associated insolence with sinfulness.104 When Lady Hertford’s coachman, William, was involved in a fight with another servant in 1723, she persuaded her husband (with great difficulty) to let him off with a beating rather than firing him. But William refused to beg pardon and then gave notice, shocking Lady Hertford with his “very ungrateful proceeding after the indulgence he has met with.”105 Complaints about servants’ drunkenness also formed a common theme in the correspondence of aristocratic women. Looking out the window at an aged gardener who had been working at night in the rain, Lady Sarah Cowper mused, It melted me to see my fellow Creature put to take such pains while I stood Idle and at Ease. But then agen when I think how this very man if he gett 5 shill: aforehand will work no more till he has drunk up that, without regard to his future wants, I grow hard and unaffected with his Condition.106

Her momentary empathy was dispelled by her assumptions about his habits of idleness and drunkenness. In 1716 her daughter-in-law, Countess Cowper, complained that her two manservants at Hampton Court, where she was in waiting, were almost constantly drunk. In desperation she sent one of them 103

On the difficulties of finding and retaining servants, see Vickery, Gentleman’s Daughter, pp. 137–43. 104 Lady Coningsby to her sister, Paris, 29 October 1737, in Coningsby Letters, p. 9. 105 Countess of Hertford to Grace Thynne, [Marlborough], 1723, in Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, pp. 79–80. See also Countess of Hertford to her son, Percy Lodge, 7 May [1743], Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, pp. 256–7. 106 Lady Sarah Cowper, diary entry, 14 August 1701, HRO D/EP F29, p. 123. 119

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back to Hertfordshire in hopes to improve the other’s disposition.107 Theft was another problem. Lady Strafford caught her clerk of the kitchen cheating her by not paying the kitchen bills with the money allotted him for that purpose.108 In contrast, Lady Wentworth chose to trust her servants despite evidence that they were stealing from her.109 Most of these women seem, like Mary Delany, to have viewed problems with their servants as routine matters that “all housekeepers are sometimes troubled with.”110 Many women of quality also fought an uphill battle to police their servants’ sexual lives, including not only cases of adultery or promiscuity but even monogamous relationships. Abigail Harley was shocked in 1695 to find that two of her servants had secretly married, even though she had known that they were engaged. Following her father’s orders, she initially discharged them, but when they proved themselves “very sensible of their fall in doing it” they were forgiven and allowed to stay on.111 Even marriage was not acceptable without permission. It was not that the Harleys preferred their employees to remain single – though many employers did – but it was the fact that the wedding was performed in secret that caused the offense. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu reported a similar “foolish accident” in her “Family” while she was traveling in Italy: Mrs. Mary is downlying of a big belly which she has conceal’d till now. William and she say they were marry’d before they left London. I know no remedy but Patience, thô you must be sensible both of the Inconvenience and Expence of it. There is no dependance on a Fool, which is her case. She allways lay in my Room on the road, and eat with me even here, till I saw her Eyes so fix’d upon him all the time he waited I thought it to no purpose to keep them asunder, and it seems they were wedded before they begun the Journey.112

Lady Mary let them off with a warning never to allow such an “accident” to happen again, but a few years later both left her service after Mary again became pregnant.113 Interestingly, her letter, with its half-hearted attempt at justification, implies that she had allowed them to sleep together. 107

Countess Cowper to Earl Cowper, [Hampton Court, 1716], HRO D/EP F59. Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 10 September [1712], BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 213r–213v; same to same, St. James’s Square, 12 September 1712, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 216; same to same, St. James’s Square, 19 September 1712, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 220. 109 Lady Wentworth to Lord Raby, 28 April [?1710], BL Add. MS 31143, fols. 482v–483v. 110 Mary Delany to Ann Dewes, Delville, 24 August 1745, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 2: 379. 111 Abigail Harley to Sir Edward Harley, 20 June 1695, BL Add. MS 70117; same to same, 18 June 1695, BL Add. MS 70117. 112 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Edward Wortley, 17 June [1740], in Halsband, ed., Complete Letters, 2: 194. 113 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Edward Wortley, [16 July 1744], in Halsband, ed., Complete Letters, 2: 338. 108

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When women were confronted with more straightforward forms of illicit sexuality, their responses revealed even more clearly their assumptions about both class and gender. In 1700, Lady Sarah Cowper became certain that one of her servants had not only gotten pregnant but had attempted an abortion. She was horrified to find that her husband had given the servant full wages as well as permission to take her time in leaving. Convinced that the servant’s low birth and promiscuity meant that she would stop at nothing, Lady Sarah lay awake in fear that the maid would rob and set fire to the house, or attempt to poison her with the failed abortifacient. But she also confided in her diary her fear that the maid would have her baby in the house, “which wou’d be very inconvenient for divers Reasons.”114 Lady Wentworth, similarly, reacted to her son’s report of a maid’s miscarriage with a mixture of pious horror and pragmatism: I should have Lyked your made Better if she had not miscarryed, for I fear she has been soe weked to take sumthing to make her miscarry, God forgiv her if she has, & me if I Judg wrong of her but such things has been don by such cattle. Indeed I thinck you had much better keep them you have then have the trouble of new ons & a thousand pound to a peny but they may prove as bad.115

She condemned the maid for her illicit behavior, both in conceiving the child and in the supposed abortion – a condemnation clearly based on moral grounds. However, she saw this behavior as typical of “such cattle,” and ultimately concluded that it would be easier to keep such servants since there were few other options. Even the famously pious Countess of Hertford mixed moral considerations with a desire to minimize her own inconvenience: Betty Melles begins to be of a shape which will not suffer her to continue long in my service, but I have not yet taken any notice of it to her, being willing to keep the peace as long as I am able; though once the bustle of that discovery is over I flatter myself I shall not be less at ease for the alterations which may attend it.116

The fact that none of these women expressed surprise at their servants’ sexual behavior reflected their own assumptions about the mores of those beneath them. Although friendships could develop between mistresses and some of their inferiors, the fundamental inequality of their positions was not questioned. The presence of servants in the household also created a focal point for conflicts of authority between husbands and wives. In these situations, the

114

Lady Sarah Cowper, diary entry, 28 October 1700, HRO D/EP F29, pp. 19–20. Lady Wentworth to Lord Raby, 7 September [1707], BL Add. MS 22225, fols. 32r–32v. 116 Countess of Hertford to her mother, [Marlborough], [1723], in Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, p. 75. 115

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gender-based submission of women to men and the class- and gender-based dominance of women in the household came into direct conflict, so it is perhaps unsurprising that these issues could create anger and anxiety.117 Women of quality frequently felt that their husbands were undermining their authority, often by supporting servants against them. The idea that women should reign supreme in the domestic realm lay behind Mary Delany’s comment to her sister that their brother’s household would never be properly managed until he married: “I wish you had the reforming of the present family you are in, but tis only a wife can do those things.” In Mrs. Delany’s view, no housekeeper, or even sister, could take the place of a wife, whose natural role was to ensure the smooth running of the household.118 Yet it was men who were supposed to hold the final authority in the family, over servants as well as blood relations. Given such assumptions, it is easy to understand how tensions could develop between spouses over the management of servants. When husbands and wives were in direct conflict, the potential for problems over servants became even greater. Anne Dormer complained in the late 1680s about her husband’s abuse in refusing to let her command their servants, something she clearly understood to be a violation of her right as mistress of the household. She was especially galled to find that Mr. Dormer had given another woman, with whom he had fallen in love, permission to give orders to the servants as if they were her own. This action presented tangible evidence of his determination to strip Anne of the status she was entitled to as his wife and mistress of the household.119 Sir William and Lady Sarah Cowper’s ongoing battles also frequently centered on disputes about their staff. In her diary, Lady Sarah repeatedly complained that her husband deliberately demeaned her in front of the servants in order to reduce her power over them. When Lady Sarah attempted to lead them toward more religious ways by reminding them of their sinfulness, Sir William rebuked her before them, encouraging them in impudence and “prodigious boldness.”120 Pondering the characteristics of an ideal husband, Lady Sarah insisted that it was his responsibility to uphold her authority: “A good Hus: maintains the propriety of his wife in Feminine afairs. In Such Causes he suffers her finally to decide, not so much as permitting an Appeal unto himself that their jurisdictions may not interfere. He will not Countenance an impudent servant against her.”121 Disciplining servants was for Lady Sarah an inherent 117 See Vickery, Gentleman’s Daughter, pp. 158–60. On the potential for such conflicts in the household during the late sixteenth century, see Orlin, Private Matters, pp. 98–104. 118 Mary Delany to Ann Dewes, Clarges Street, 22 March 1743/4, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 2: 283. 119 Anne Dormer to Lady Elizabeth Trumbull, 20 July [n.y.], BL Add. MS 72516, fol. 181v. 120 Lady Sarah Cowper, diary entry, 10 October 1700, HRO D/EP F29, p. 15 and passim. 121 Lady Sarah Cowper, diary entry, 2 August 1701, HRO D/EP F29, p. 118. On the Cowpers’ servants and Lady Sarah’s understanding of her domestic rights, see Kugler, “Prescription, Culture, and Shaping Identity,” pp. 80–4.

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aspect of “Feminine afairs” with which her husband had no right, though he had the power, to interfere. Yet even in generally successful marriages, conflicts between different types of household authority could simmer just below the surface. In 1720, Earl Cowper (Lady Sarah’s son) felt compelled to give his wife advice about their servants. He recommended against what he saw as her too-frequent chiding of them in small matters, since he believed that this only made them more willing to disobey her in larger issues. But he added that this was only advice, assuring her that “I submitt ’em wholy to your conduct, act as absolutely, as I can enable You to do, turn ’em away & take ’em at your pleasure, & when you have ’em use ’em as you think fit.”122 He emphasized her total authority, but the fact that he both gave advice and granted this power demonstrated his sense of his own place as ultimate head of the household. When Elizabeth Montagu faced a rebellious servant soon after her marriage, she needed her husband’s authority to support her own. Thanks to his backing, the servant “seems desirous to oblige now he finds the other way does not succeed,” she finally reported to her husband; “he design’d the strongest Will should rule, & mine being back’d with the mighty circumstance of power came off Conqueror, & I believe may govern for the future without mutiny or Rebellion.”123 Her “power” came not only from her status as mistress but also from her husband’s status as head of the household. For many women of quality, the management of servants presented both opportunity and frustration. When servants conformed to their mistresses’ vision of the proper relationship of obedience and affection, women could pride themselves on their care and benevolence. When problems developed, however, many women revealed their fundamental distrust of the morals and abilities of their employees. These problems were only compounded by the interaction of such class assumptions with issues of gender. Class dominance provided a means for women to surmount the disabilities of gender, but this authority was constantly threatened, and often undermined, by the competing dominance of men over women.

Estate management and hands-on labor Household work frequently extended to more direct roles than oversight of domestic servants. Of course the degree of labor women performed varied according to their circumstances, status, and individual inclination, but it was rare even for aristocratic women to remain strictly decorative. Women’s responsibility to run their estates during their husbands’ absences was widely accepted. Many also took an active role in managing their estates when their husbands were home, and of course widows and other single women had no 122

Earl Cowper to Countess Cowper, Cole Green, 5 June 1720, HRO D/EP F193. Quoted in Sylvia Harcstark Myers, The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 97.

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choice but to do so.124 Moreover, even overseeing others’ labor could carry with it time-consuming and serious responsibilities, as we have already seen to some extent in the discussion of servants. Not even the best servants could always be relied upon, thanks to the routine mishaps of everyday life. Lady Luxborough, for instance, felt overwhelmed by the daunting situation she faced after a series of accidents and deaths among her staff. “I am alone; and must be a farmeress too, unknowing as I am,” she complained, adding that her troubles were only compounded by the constant reproaches she received from her estranged husband.125 No matter how much a woman might want to live a life of pure leisure, it was rarely possible. The oversight of estate affairs is a constant theme in the letters of aristocratic women, who consistently portrayed their role as active and productive. Despite a pervasive, albeit flexible, assumption about the gendered division of estate management, female activities often overlapped with business considered part of the male domain. Thus Lady Cassandra Willoughby’s enthusiasm at the prospect of total “government” of her brother’s household, with which this chapter began, reflected her own surprisingly broad experience. Lady Cassandra not only furnished the house, ran the household, and entertained a wide variety of acquaintances, but she also catalogued her father’s collection of books and manuscripts and wrote a family history.126 In addition, she helped her brother oversee major renovations of his house and gardens.127 In her own life, then, her activities as mistress of Wollaton Hall led her to realms of learning and estate management that were considered by conduct writers to be outside the proper feminine arena of the household. Like Lady Cassandra, many other aristocratic women engaged in matters that took them beyond narrowly domestic affairs. They were most successful in doing so when circumstances left them without the presence of a male head of household. Lady Anne Clifford eagerly seized the opportunity to act as a landlord when her widowhood gave her total control of her vast properties. Throughout her old age, she personally oversaw the collection of rents and disbursements for her entire estate.128 Abigail Harley explained in 1721 124

Vivienne Larminie, Wealth, Kinship and Culture: The Seventeenth-Century Newdigates of Arbury and Their World (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Royal Historical Society/Boydell Press, 1995), pp. 79, 85; G. E. Mingay, The Gentry: The Rise and Fall of a Ruling Class (London: Longman, 1976), pp. 89–90. See also Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England 1650–1750 (New York: Knopf, 1980), ch. 2. 125 Lady Luxborough to William Shenstone, Barrells, 31 August 1750, in Letters to Shenstone, pp. 220–1. 126 Friedman, House and Household, pp. 160–3. 127 Willoughby, Willoughby Family Continuation, pp. 134–5. 128 See, e.g., Lady Anne Clifford, diary entry, 29 February [sic] 1676, in D. J. H. Clifford, ed., The Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton, 1990), p. 259; Lady Anne Clifford, diary entry, 10 March 1676, in Clifford, ed., Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford, pp. 263–5. See also Hodgkin, “Diary.” 124

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that her niece had to remain in the country rather than visit London, because after the death of her mother, the niece had been solely responsible for running the household. Tellingly, things were especially hectic since she was overseeing the construction of a new wing of the house.129 A vivid picture of one woman’s role emerges in the correspondence of Frances Boscawen, who filled her letters to her absent husband with references to her engagement in household affairs. She took pleasure as well as pride in her activities, and this involvement helped her to shape their relationship and respective roles. In 1747, for example, she wrote to him that she knew nothing of public news – such matters were outside her realm. “My knowledge extends no further than my own household,” she insisted. But she immediately continued, “Within this the article of stable is properly comprehended,” and went on to discuss the coachman’s suggestion that they sell a horse, with no apparent sense of conflict over entering a masculine domain.130 Her descriptions of her life at Hatchlands, their estate, provide snapshots of her quotidian activities. Apologizing in 1756 for not writing at greater length, she discussed “a world of little affairs” that had taken up her time. These included overseeing the orchard, negotiating with tenants over their rights, meeting with the steward and gardener, organizing work for her maids, distributing salaries, and paying taxes. She also oversaw the building of their new house and drew up a plan to regulate the builders’ activities while she was away.131 Mrs. Boscawen obviously expected her husband to approve of all these activities; she also clearly assumed that they fell within the normal range of her authority. She was pleased to announce on another occasion that she had gotten all the hay in just before the rains. In addition, she overruled the recommendation of her estate manager in deciding to have the pasture rolled, and she oversaw the sowing of what she called “my turnips.” Although she joked about her participation in activities more suitable to a “goody farmer” than a “hero’s wife,” she was willing to trust her own judgment over that of her manager.132 Not only do such events demonstrate her apparently well-founded confidence in her own abilities, but they also show that having an estate manager did not mean that women necessarily withdrew into idleness. Although in theory the manager might answer directly to the husband, in practice this was not always the case. 129

Abigail Harley to Edward, Lord Harley, Aywood, 27 February 1721/22, BL Add. MS 70378, fol. 164v. 130 Frances Boscawen to Edward Boscawen, George Street, 31 March 1747, in AspinallOglander, ed., Admiral’s Wife, p. 36. 131 Frances Boscawen to Edward Boscawen, Hatchlands Park, 14 October 1756, in Aspinall-Oglander, ed., Admiral’s Wife, pp. 210–11. 132 Frances Boscawen to Edward Boscawen, 1 August 1755, in Aspinall-Oglander, ed., Admiral’s Wife, p. 189. Italics added. This was not the only time that she did so, either. A year later she announced to her husband that she had sold their wheat crop, driving a harder bargain than the estate manager himself could: Frances Boscawen to Edward Boscawen, Hatchlands Park, 4 October 1756, in Aspinall-Oglander, ed., Admiral’s Wife, p. 208. 125

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Other women of quality were equally engaged in the details of farm management and production, though not all of them enjoyed it. In 1742 Henrietta Knight wrote to a friend that moving to Warwickshire (after separating from her husband) had transformed her life; instead of reading and thinking about fashions, she said, “The thing in life I am least accustomed to, the thing I most detested, has filled a great part of my time. Imagine me letting leases, receiving rents, paying parish dues, and anxious lest a shower of rain should spoil my hay.”133 The Duchess of Marlborough, who kept careful track of her estate expenses, was irate when she found out how much her improvident grandson paid for his haying. “I am labouring like a packhorse every day to save him from the cheats,” she wrote, complaining that he never took her good advice.134 Lady Strafford assured her husband in 1724 that all the hay had been brought in, and she had been careful not to leave the house until it was done, “that the men might stick to it.”135 For others, farming represented less hard work than pleasure, often shading into what appear to be more recreational activities. The Duchess of Kent wrote to her brother that a 1731 visit to Tunbridge Wells had not decreased her pleasure in the country, since she enjoyed caring for her garden and monitoring the fecundity of her guinea hens.136 Lady Annabella Howard similarly insisted to a friend that her life in the country secluded her from any interesting news: “I can tell you nothing but when my henns lay and when my butter is come.”137 Such comments reveal that many elite women presented these activities as both worthy in themselves and as a contrast to the fashionable leisure of the beau monde. Like Mrs. Boscawen’s self-description as a “goody farmer,” the rejection of fashionable life in favor of industrious domesticity itself became a fashionable cliché during the early eighteenth century. Thus Catherine Talbot insisted that by rejecting modish idleness a young woman could be really happy – unlike “those poor idle Girls who for want of knowing how to amuse themselves at home are forced to fancy themselves happy in the continual & wearisome repetition of the same insipid Diversions Day after day.”138 As a woman on the margin of the elite, she might be expected to

133

Henrietta Knight (later Lady Luxborough) to Countess of Hertford, Barrels Green, 19 July 1742, in Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, pp. 156–57. 134 Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough to Lady Diana Russell, Windsor Lodge, 18 July 1734, in Scott Thomson, ed., Letters of a Grandmother, pp. 136–7. 135 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, Boughton, 25 August 1724, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 405r. 136 Sophia, Duchess of Kent to Count Bentinck, Wrest, 11 August [1731], BL Eg. MS 1721, fol. 30. 137 Lady Annabella Howard to Countess of Marlborough, [1693?], BL Add. MS 61455, fol. 146r. 138 Catherine Talbot, journal entry, 8 November [1753], BL Add. MS 46688, fol. 21r–21v. 126

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voice such an opinion as an explanation for not participating in fashionable activities. But even those who were firmly entrenched in the Quality employed this same rhetoric. Lady Hertford frequently used the persona of a plain country gentlewoman in her correspondence, despite being a member of one of England’s most prominent families and holding court posts for almost fifteen years. In a 1726 poem to Henrietta Knight, who had teased her for being a fine court lady, Lady Hertford insisted that she was actually at home in the country: I am not drest in gems or costly lace Only a cambric cap adorns my face; My garment’s plain and of a sober hue, For household cares and daggling in the dew. Retired from Courtly seats, I take my ease, Nor fear offending, nor aspire to please; (Contented with my lot in silent shades To nurse my children and direct my maids).139

She used her clothes to represent her sober, domestic pursuits, and to contrast decorative court roles with the labor of caring for children and directing servants. Just as Frances Boscawen presented herself to her husband in the role of industrious household manager in order to win his approval, so Lady Hertford manipulated the opposing conventions of court and country to create a persona understood and approved by her fashionable friends as well as those of lower status. Despite complaining about her own involvement in farming, Henrietta Knight reflected this glorification of rural work in a letter to Lady Hertford in 1742; she imagined that the parliamentary session would force the latter to London, but not “as a fine lady would fly to town to preserve her from solitude; for I am persuaded you had rather direct your gardener to form your wilderness though the weather is severe, than be sheltered under the roof of a theatre.”140 The potency of these conventions was reflected in the correspondence of Elizabeth Rowe, a close friend of Lady Hertford and author of improving literature; highly conscious of their differences in social status, she created lengthy fantasies in which Lady Hertford was only a simple farmer’s wife living out the rural ideal. After depicting an imaginary scene of her friend surrounded by happy, rustic servants and children, she finished by expressing her admiration for the degree to which Lady Hertford was able to conform to that ideal despite her status: “The height of your station

139

Countess of Hertford to Henrietta Knight, Marlborough, 1 November 1726, in Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, p. 128. 140 Henrietta Knight to Countess of Hertford, Barrells, 20 November 1742, in Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, p. 161. 127

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has not perverted your taste for that guiltless happiness which nature in her perfection seems formed to copy.”141 The persona Lady Hertford created for herself in her correspondence provided a bridge between her and her lowerstatus friends, as well as emphasizing her own virtue. At the same time it reinforced her social superiority by constantly drawing attention to it. Estate management was not the only work in which aristocratic women engaged. Many performed hands-on labor, although they had strong ideas about what type of work was appropriate to their rank. Such labor enabled them to emphasize their virtuous industry, while the kinds of work they did reinforced their notions about the connection between labor and status. For women in more old-fashioned families like the Harleys, this could include tasks such as potting eels and making medicines.142 Catherine Talbot included among her “Employment” letter-writing, reading, and painting.143 Lady Hertford also performed physical work around her house; her letters contain references to infusing myrtle leaves for scented water, making a cream cheese, and fixing dessert for her guests (her maid being unable to offer “the smallest assistance to me in this article”). “Like Martha I am busied about many things,” she wrote, comparing herself to the biblical paragon of domestic work.144 Frances Boscawen described organizing the contents of her closet and drawers; she and her daughters also daily fed their poultry, and she oversaw their sewing.145 Needlework was, of course, a common pastime of aristocratic women, combining decorative femininity with practical results. One of Lady Cassandra Willoughby’s primary duties at her brother’s estate was to maintain and repair the furnishings and fabrics of his house.146 Writing to her son about Lady Strafford’s imminent appearance at a royal birthday, Lady Wentworth mentioned that her sleeves were covered “with dyomon Buttens & Loops,” and that Betty Wentworth and Lady Strafford had “made up the Loops & soad them al one them selvs.” Lady Strafford herself added, “indeed I have been very much oblidg’d to Sister Betty for she has not been 141 Elizabeth Rowe to Countess of Hertford, [1729?], in Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, p. 130. See also same to same, [1728?], Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, p. 129. 142 Abigail Harley to Edward, Lord Harley, 14 August 1720, BL Add. MS 70378, fol. 103; same to same, Eywood, 26 November 1723, BL Add. MS 70379, fol. 42; same to same, London, 5 January 1725/6, BL Add. MS 70379, fol. 138v. 143 Catherine Talbot, journal entry, 21 November [1753], BL Add. MS 46688, fol. 26; Catherine Talbot, journal entry, 6 May 1751, BL Add. MS 46690, fol. 2v; Catherine Talbot, journal entry, 14 June 1751, BL Add. MS 46690, fols. 18–19. 144 Countess of Hertford to her son, Percy Lodge, 16 June 1744, in Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, p. 324; same to same, Percy Lodge, 7 May [1743], in Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, pp. 256–7; same to same, Percy Lodge, 22 April 1743, in Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, p. 252. 145 Frances Boscawen to Edward Boscawen, Hatchlands, 25 May 1755, in AspinallOglander, ed., Admiral’s Wife, p. 178; same to same, 9 June 1755, in Aspinall-Oglander, ed., Admiral’s Wife, pp. 179–80. 146 Friedman, House and Household, p. 160.

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out this three day’s but has worked for me all day very hard.” In this case Betty’s hard work might in part have been attributable to her status as an unmarried dependant in the household, but even Lady Strafford worked on her gown.147 It is important to remember that although all this work fell into the category of genteel domestic activities, light labor with primarily decorative results, women still wrote about it as work. But there was always a tension between the notion of this light labor as work and the idea that women of quality need not labor at all. It is difficult, therefore, to interpret the trend among some aristocratic women to engage in heavier rural labor such as dairying, which became a fashionable pastime in the eighteenth century.148 This fashion was undoubtedly made possible by the awareness of those who participated in it that they did not need to do so for economic survival, and it is unlikely that they performed the really heavy tasks. But it is nonetheless important to remain aware of the powerful ideological force behind feminine domestic industry. Dairying among fashionable ladies could thus serve the dual purpose of confirming their elite status while also creating an image of virtuous domesticity. The glorification of such domesticity can be seen as well in other eighteenth-century trends, such as the fashion for the straw hats traditionally worn by milkmaids.149 These were fashions that reflected the ideological appeal of images of the countryside, images that emphasized country domesticity, virtue, and innocence. Nonetheless, these were above all fashions and served to confirm their participants’ leisured status even as they associated these women with rural virtue. Behind such fashions lay a strong sense of the types of work that were appropriate for elite women; dairying was attractive because of its associations with rural innocence and purity, but only when it was not a woman’s main source of income. Individual circumstances were thus important in defining appropriate work. While Lady Hertford and Frances Boscawen took pride in their labor, Lady Luxborough clearly believed that direct oversight of her farm represented a decline in status, and connected it with her husband’s unjust treatment of her. The Howards’ failed marriage, discussed in the previous chapter (see pp. 87–95), provides a particularly clear example of one woman’s sense of where the line fell between reasonable and unreasonable

147 Lady Wentworth to Lord Strafford, 5 February [1711/12], BL Add. MS 22225, fol. 224r; Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, 5 February 1711/12, BL Add. MS 22225, fol. 225v. On elite women working on their own gowns, especially decorations such as embroidery, see Anne Buck, Dress in Eighteenth-Century England (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1979), pp. 180–2; Aileen Ribeiro, Dress in Eighteenth-Century Europe, 1715–1789 (London: B. T. Batsford Ltd., 1984), pp. 57–8. Mary Delany was famous for her elaborate embroidery of her gowns. 148 Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England 1727–1783 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 111. 149 Buck, Dress, p. 203.

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labor. In apparent preparation for a lawsuit against Charles, Henrietta Howard collected evidence of his “abuse.” This claim included the accusation that Charles had spent all their money, including her separate property. But what she clearly considered most damning was her husband’s abuse of her domestic skills. Her own complaints, combined with the depositions of a former landlady and an ex-neighbor, show the forms of labor that Henrietta obviously believed were excessive and would be seen to be excessive by outside observers. Responding to Charles’s accusations that she had unjustly abandoned him, she wrote: You expected and I perform’d at that time [i.e. when they lived together] attendance upon you as A common Servant, no reasonable Master Corrects his footman more severely than you did me when any thing of your Cloaths or linnen was out of order, and you have often without one Compassionate relenting word beheld me washing and mending your Stockings. How could a Gentleman, A Christain [sic], or a Man be an unconcern’d spectator of such a Scene of torment in one of his fellow Creatures?150

Their former landlady Anne Hall, an upholsterer’s wife, testified that she had witnessed Henrietta carrying lighted coals for the fire from room to room, and setting the table while Charles sat “in an Easy Chair” and watched. She was even more shocked to have seen Henrietta, in tears, mending Charles’s stockings, “which has induced this Deponent to mend ’em for her, while she in the mean time did take care of & nurse her this Deponents Child.”151 The class assumptions behind this testimony are obvious but significant; what was abusive for Charles to demand of Henrietta was perfectly acceptable for the landlady to perform. The deposition of Anne Cell was similar, also emphasizing the lack of any servant in the Howard household; Anne believed that “Mrs Howard wanted Necessarys” when she had lived in the neighborhood some fourteen years earlier. Anne often provided meals for Henrietta, which the latter would not have accepted, according to Anne, “had she not been in the utmost want.”152 According to this testimony, Mrs. Howard was willing to cross the normal social boundaries between her and Mrs. Cell, but only because she was in desperate straits. Henrietta also accused Charles of relying entirely on her income to support them. When he had spent her money, she was the one who went “in A mask” with Anne to sell all their goods in an attempt to raise the funds to pay off their debts. She even tried to sell her hair.153 All three testimonies stressed Mrs. Howard’s constant obedience and kindness 150

Henrietta Howard to Charles Howard, 25 May 1727, BL Add. MS 22627, fol. 41v. Deposition of Anne Hall, 4 November 1727, BL Add. MS 22627, fol. 43r. 152 Deposition of Anne Cell, 4 November 1727, BL Add. MS 22627, fol. 45r–45v. 153 Henrietta Howard to Charles Howard, 25 May 1727, BL Add. MS 22627, fol. 41v; deposition of Anne Cell, 4 November 1727, BL Add. MS 22627, fol. 45v. 151

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to her husband in spite of his ill treatment; they were not meant to question the basis of matrimonial inequality, but to show that Charles had violated the unwritten laws of marriage by forcing his wife into labor not suitable to her status. Henrietta obviously believed that such treatment should be enough to justify her refusal to continue living with her husband. Assumptions about rank thus became a means by which she could mitigate the fundamental inequality of marriage. Although women participated in labor, both managerial and hands-on, there were understood to be certain limits on that labor, which were determined by social status.

Conclusion In 1753, Lady Elizabeth Lyttelton jested with her brother-in-law about her busy schedule of “attendance upon many different sorts of savages, inhabitants of my dominions; my very affectionate and loyal subjects who lay me eggs, bring me gowns, and draw me in my triumphant carr about the said dominions.”154 Her joke relied for its effect on the comic juxtaposition of domestic life and political power. But this was precisely the bargain that many didactic writers offered women – accepting their exclusion from public life and their subordination in marriage in return for domestic authority. Moreover, as her joke also revealed, the authority was offered not only over livestock but over servants – the “affectionate and loyal subjects” who brought Lady Lyttelton her gowns. If her remarks were meant to highlight her actual lack of power, they glossed over the very real authority given to elite women over those of lower status. Grouping the servants in with her chickens and other “savages” suggests some of the less pleasant implications of this power. In every area of household management, from the decoration of houses, to the oversight of servants, to more direct labor, women of quality could make important contributions to their families’ economy, and frequently a broader contribution as well. Ostensibly safe within the confines of the domestic sphere, they discussed their control over hundreds of acres of land, dozens of servants, and the expenditure of thousands of pounds. Although the direction of household affairs was conventionally assigned to women as an appropriate domestic activity, the reality of daily life meant that elite women frequently became involved in matters supposedly outside their purview. For many, class distinctions provided a means to assume power over others. But this was not simply a matter of turning their backs on social conventions and feminine norms. Indeed, many conduct writers encouraged this power as the one legitimate form of feminine authority. Yet competing demands of status

154 Lady Elizabeth Lyttelton to William Lyttelton, Hagley, August 1753, in Wyndham, Chronicles, 2: 267.

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and gender hierarchies meant that women could find their authority contested or undermined even within the household. This was particularly the case when the opportunities promised to them in the domestic ideal came up against the submission they were supposed to offer to their husbands. As they wrote about their activities and struggled to present themselves in the best light, women revealed their fundamental beliefs about their rights and responsibilities.

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5

Consumption and Fashion Consumption, like household management, was considered quintessentially feminine not only by moralizing authors but by women themselves. Yet it presented even greater potential problems for women of quality. If the moralists were primarily concerned with the supposedly pernicious effects of such behavior, it offered more complex issues for aristocratic women. In the elite world of competitive display, women’s visibility in public through participation in fashionable activities, wearing costly clothes and jewelry, and circulating gifts was crucial in demonstrating their membership in the Quality. At the same time, however, the pervasive view that such behavior posed a moral threat, coupled with the dramatic expansion of new forms of consumption during the early eighteenth century, meant that women constantly renegotiated their roles as fashionable consumers. Refusing to participate in fashionable activities could be a means of asserting status as much as choosing to participate could. As we have seen, the early eighteenth century is now widely recognized as a significant moment in the development of a consumer society. Historians have noted the introduction of greater numbers as well as new types of consumer goods, with the emphasis shifting in elite households from grandeur to intimacy – what Philip Jenkins has termed “the supplanting of the Great Hall by the drawing-room.”1 Scholars have also drawn attention to the implications of such changes for ways of asserting status – for instance, through new construction or participation in high culture.2 At the same time, theoretical work on consumption and fashion has shown this to be an area of 1

Philip Jenkins, The Making of a Ruling Class: The Glamorgan Gentry 1640–1790 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 250–5; quote p. 251. For a different chronology of change, placing the big shift toward the end of the eighteenth century, see John Cornforth, “A Georgian Patchwork,” in The Fashioning and Functioning of the British Country House, ed. Gervase Jackson-Stops et al. (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1989), pp. 155–74. See also Lorna Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain, 1660–1760 (London: Methuen, 1988); John Styles, “Manufacturing, Consumption and Design in Eighteenth-Century England,” in Consumption and the World of Goods, ed. John Brewer and Roy Porter (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 527–54; G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 158–60; Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England 1727–1783 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 71. 2 Peter Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town, 1660–1770 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 232–40; John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and 133

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ambiguity and contest. Pierre Bourdieu, for example, discusses the importance of different meanings of consumption to different classes, as they set out to distinguish themselves from those above as well as those below their social status.3 Until recently, however, gender had largely been left out of this picture, other than in passing comments that women’s consumerism caused anxiety, or in specialist works that note the importance of women to particular areas of consumption.4 Much of our understanding of elite women’s consumption continues to be dominated by the work of sociologist Thorstein Veblen. Veblen argued that women serve only as markers of their husbands’ status, passive mannequins on which their husbands’ wealth is displayed through their clothes, jewelry, and leisure.5 This model has pervaded historical discussions of aristocratic “conspicuous consumption.”6 More recently, however, scholars have begun to explore the specific meanings that consumption and

Giroux, 1997); John Brewer, “‘The Most Polite Age and the Most Vicious’: Attitudes towards Culture as a Commodity, 1660–1800,” in The Consumption of Culture, 1600–1800: Image, Object, Text, ed. Ann Bermingham and John Brewer (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 348. 3 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984). See also Chandra Mukerji, From Graven Images: Patterns of Modern Materialism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), p. 243. 4 See, e.g., Anna Somers Cocks, “The Nonfunctional Use of Ceramics in the English Country House During the Eighteenth Century,” in Fashioning and Functioning of the British Country House, ed. Jackson-Stops et al., pp. 204–7. One major exception is BarkerBenfield, Culture of Sensibility, ch. 4. 5 Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899; reprint, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1994). For an attempt to historicize Veblen’s thesis by stressing the importance of class-based emulation and the significance of the Industrial Revolution, see Quentin Bell, On Human Finery (revised edition, London: Allison & Busby, 1992). For a critique of McKendrick, Brewer and Plumb’s reliance on Veblen’s theory of top-down emulation that draws attention to the class-specificity of Veblen’s work as well as to the presence of other directions of influence, see Ann Bermingham, “Introduction,” in Bermingham and Brewer, eds., Consumption of Culture, pp. 11–13. See also Styles, “Manufacturing, Consumption and Design”; Grant McCracken, Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988), especially pp. 11–21. Margaret R. Hunt, The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England, 1680–1780 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 2–5, offers a general critique of the model of emulation. 6 Lawrence Stone stresses the importance of conspicuous consumption for the aristocracy throughout the early modern period: see Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), especially ch. 10; Lawrence Stone, Family and Fortune: Studies in Aristocratic Finance in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973); Lawrence Stone and Jeanne C. Fawtier Stone, An Open Elite? England 1540–1880 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 299–322, 353–8. 134

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fashion held for women themselves.7 Such exploration is especially important given the widespread acknowledgement of women’s special involvement in consumer society. Because of the enormous impact of consumerism on eighteenth-century society, women’s activities in this area held great implications not only for their personal lives but for society as a whole. Didactic authors were not alone in understanding particular forms of consumption and fashion to be essentially feminine areas of interest. When she found out that Edward Wortley had revealed their secret courtship to Richard Steele and his wife, Lady Mary Pierrepont’s angry response implicitly acknowledged the gendered realms of tea-table and tavern: “He over a bottle and she over a tea table has (I don’t question) said manny witty things upon this Occasion.”8 The letters of elite women were filled with requests for purchases from London and abroad, and advice on changing fashions in all areas from food to furnishings. Wives whose letters were ordinarily steeped in the language of deference were unafraid to offer advice and even criticism of their husbands’ taste. And it was readily acknowledged that fashionable society was dominated by women. Although the Countess of Hertford complained in 1744 that fashionable activities “employ four parts out of five of the time of half the fine ladies in London,” she concluded that “while one lives in this world one must comply with the customs of it.”9 Asking her nephew to pass on a message to his wife about some fabric she had sent to London, Abigail Harley joked about involving him, even briefly, in “womens affaires.”10 Amanda Vickery’s careful examination of the diaries and correspondence of late eighteenth-century gentry women is the most comprehensive work to examine women’s perceptions of themselves as consumers. Recognizing their central role in this area, she argues that “outside the households of peers and plutocrats the daily management of consumption fell to women.” Women were responsible for “repetitive and predominantly mundane” purchases, while men’s consumption was “occasional and impulsive, or 7 In addition to the work of Amanda Vickery, discussed below, see Elizabeth KowaleskiWallace, Consuming Subjects: Women, Shopping, and Business in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); Lorna Weatherill, “A Possession of One’s Own: Women and Consumer Behaviour in England, 1660–1740,” Journal of British Studies 25 (1986): 131–56; Lorna Weatherill, “The Meaning of Consumer Behaviour in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century England,” in Brewer and Porter, eds., Consumption and the World of Goods, pp. 206–27; Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture; Barker-Benfield, Culture of Sensibility, especially ch. 4. 8 Lady Mary Pierrepont to Edward Wortley, 5 May 1710, in Robert Halsband, ed., The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965–7), 1: 35. 9 Countess of Hertford to her son, London, 9 February 1744, in Helen Sard Hughes, ed., The Gentle Hertford: Her Life and Letters (New York: Macmillan, 1940), p. 308. 10 Abigail Harley to Edward, Earl of Oxford, Aywood, 4 July 1725, BL Add. MS 70379, fol. 101r.

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expensive and dynastic.”11 Vickery determines that gentry women struck a careful balance between participating in fashion and considering other factors, such as durability, in their purchases. She also usefully emphasizes the intense emotional meanings that individual women could attach to particular goods through their association with significant events or personal ties.12 Distinguishing between her gentry subjects and the women of the “fashionable elite,” Vickery implies that the latter’s participation in fashionable consumption was less complex and ambiguous.13 This chapter will seek to complicate that picture. But Vickery’s discussion of women’s consumption provides a helpful starting point for considering aristocratic women’s practices as well. As I have argued in the previous chapter, women of quality did play a significant role in the decoration and sometimes even purchase of residences, as well as other major expenses. Yet it is also true that purchasing these larger items was often less significant for them than for their male relations. The Earl of Strafford, for instance, bought the estate of Stainborough, in Yorkshire, in order to emphasize his dynastic claims to the traditional Wentworth territory and to show up his cousin’s estate nearby. He not only made the purchase but oversaw the designs for the renovations of the house.14 His wife, on the other hand, was more active in choosing and purchasing furnishings for their residences.15 Aristocratic women’s central role in consumption is also visible in their participation in networks of gift exchange, one essential means by which the Quality preserved and promoted its status. Anthropologists have long recognized the role of gift-giving in cultures to create ties of reciprocal obligations,16 and the women of this study were particularly important in creating such ties because of the forms that gift exchange usually took. Gifts within the Quality were primarily small items, often decorative or combining

11

Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 166, 168 (italics original); Amanda Vickery, “Women and the World of Goods: A Lancashire Consumer and Her Possessions, 1751–81,” in Brewer and Porter, eds., Consumption and the World of Goods, pp. 279–81. 12 Vickery, Gentleman’s Daughter, ch. 5. 13 ibid., pp. 169–74. 14 Nikolaus Pevsner, “John Bodt in England,” Architectural Review 130 (1961): 29–34; John Harris, “Bodt and Stainborough,” Architectural Review 130 (1961): 34–5; H. Avray Tipping, “Country Home: Wentworth Castle – I,” Country Life 56, no. 1450 (18 October 1924): 588–96, especially pp. 593–6; H. Avray Tipping, “Country Home: Wentworth Castle – II,” Country Life 56, no. 1452 (25 October 1924): 634–42, especially pp. 635–6. 15 See Chapter 4 above. 16 Marcel Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. Ian Cunnison (London: Cohen & West Ltd., 1954); Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (Chicago: Aldine Atherton, Inc., 1972); Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood, The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of Consumption (London: Allen Lane, 1979); Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (New York: Vintage Books, 1979). 136

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decorative with more utilitarian functions; they were thus outside the category of large, dynastic purchases with which men were most involved. The frequency and regularity of the exchange were as important as the content of gifts themselves. Among common gifts were food, particularly venison or other game or fish from country estates, sent to people living in London; in return, those in the metropolis sent items such as tea or chocolate.17 Fabrics or other materials for garments were also frequently exchanged, usually in the form of lace or pieces of fabric rather than finished gowns. Another category of gifts included small furnishings such as mirrors, small tables or screens, and books. Finally, there were more personal and valuable items such as portraits or jewelry, which women often carefully specified as bequests in their wills. Such exchanges of gifts often functioned as an informal system of credit, by which purchases could be made on behalf of one individual in the knowledge that eventually the roles of giver and recipient would be reversed. Although there were particular occasions, such as birthdays or weddings, which were expected to be acknowledged with an exchange of gifts, more important than such special occasions seems to have been the maintenance of a regular and frequent system of exchange. It was in keeping this system together that women played a crucial role. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the distribution of charity and patronage to poorer neighbors had been a significant method for the local elite to maintain their status.18 The Harley family, for instance, regularly distributed food as well as other charity to the local poor during the 1690s.19 Such charity was a fundamental means of displaying rank and power; as J. V. Beckett points out, “paternalism was, as much as anything, an opportunity to grasp opportunities which would enhance the standing of the landlord within the community.”20 Already by the late seventeenth century, however, this traditional form of charity and hospitality was on the decline.21 The Harleys provide a particularly good example of transformations in the use and types of 17 On the significance of gifts of venison, see Susan E. Whyman, Sociability and Power in Late-Stuart England: The Cultural Worlds of the Verneys 1660–1720 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), ch. 1. 18 G. E. Mingay, The Gentry: The Rise and Fall of a Ruling Class (London: Longman, 1976), pp. 121–4, 140–3; Keith Wrightson, English Society 1580–1680 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1982), pp. 57–61; Felicity Heal, Hospitality in Early Modern England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 14–20, 69, 79–80; Felicity Heal and Clive Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales, 1500–1700 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), p. 286; Anthony Fletcher, A County Community in Peace and War (London: Longman, 1975), pp. 155–6. 19 See, e.g., Abigail Harley to Sir Edward Harley, 5 February 1694, BL Add. MS 70117. 20 J. V. Beckett, The Aristocracy in England 1660–1914 (Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986), p. 356; see Heal, Hospitality, pp. 6–7, 20. 21 James M. Rosenheim, The Emergence of a Ruling Order: English Landed Society 1650–1750 (London: Longman, 1998), pp. 104–5; Whyman, Sociability and Power; Heal, Hospitality, especially pp. 392–4, 400–3.

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gift-giving, during the period when the family rose in wealth and status at the turn of the century. As family members moved to London to join the fashionable elite there, their commitment to older types of hospitality waned. Their letters ceased to mention local charity. Instead their correspondence increasingly referred to gifts within the circle of family and acquaintances of the same status, used as a form of competitive display. We can see this interest in a 1714 letter from Lady Dupplin regarding a christening present of a gold caudle cup and salver, worth £200, for her brother’s first child: “I dont doubt but it will be approved & I am sure it is a present nobody needs be ashamed to make to the greatest Lady in England.”22 The exchange of smaller gifts also helped to preserve ties within the family and among larger social alliances. It is in this context that we should read a typical letter from Lady Isabella Wentworth in 1707, to her son Thomas on the Continent: I giv you millions of thancks for all my prety things. My neic is much delighted with the Buckles. I have geven as you ordred Each Sister & Mrs Kelly a pair of Shoe Buckles & your Sister Wentworth to & a Soard, all from you . . . pray tell me what I am indetted to you for Mrs Ellesons Buckles & Neic Hanburis stomeger [stomacher] Buckles, besydse a m[illion] of thancks for chusing them soe pretty. I gave your Sister Wentworth the Picktooth case as yo[u] designed her. . . . She is exstreemly delighted with it soe ar all that see it. Indeed it is charming. Doe you remember you sent in the begining of the summer a sett of Buttens for a mans coat, & a soard. . . . Indeed none has seen it, but none would take it more kyndly, or become it Better, then Mr Arrundel & he Loocks Blanck Mr Kelley having one & he none.23

The references to buckles, swords, a “picktooth case,” and buttons show some of the typical gifts Lady Wentworth used to cement alliances among family members – in this instance including herself, a niece (Mrs. Hanbury), her daughters, a granddaughter (Mrs. Kelly), and their various husbands, as well as the wife of Thomas’s agent, Mr. Elleson. All these were relatively small presents, but they helped Lady Wentworth hold together an extended network of relations through a system that tied Thomas both to those dependent on him for support and to those who might be helpful to him. Her role was especially important since Thomas’s diplomatic service meant that he had not met many of these relations or even seen some of his own sisters for several years. His mother provided suggestions, distributed gifts, and ensured that the proper forms of reciprocity and even-handedness were observed. 22

Lady Dupplin to Abigail Harley, Old Windsor, 24 January 1714/15, BL Add. MS 70147. Lady Dupplin was a daughter of Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford. 23 Lady Isabella Wentworth to Lord Raby, 18 and 21 November [1707], BL Add. MS 22225, fols. 58v–59v. 138

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Aristocratic women’s participation in gift exchange among non-family members was perhaps even more important. An examination of this behavior, moreover, complicates any attempt to distinguish between the personal or emotional meanings of consumer goods and their significance as indicators of status or fashion. Mary, Countess Cowper, acknowledged the political stakes in a 1716 diary entry recording a present from the Princess of Wales. The Princess met with her privately and told her that the other Ladies of the Bedchamber were to be given amber boxes, “but as she loved & esteem’d me a hundred times more than any of the rest she woud make a distinction & not give me an amber box as she had done to the other Ladys, so pull’d out of a drawer, a very fine gold snuff box, & gave it me with words that farr Exceeded the Value of the box, tho’ that was very Valuable.”24 Lady Cowper’s reading of the transaction depended on her understanding of the importance of the gift as a sign of political favor, intelligible because it took place in the Princess’s “Closet” – her private chamber – and because it was explicitly distinguished from the (implicitly more routine and materially less valuable) presents for the other Bedchamber Ladies. At the same time, Lady Cowper’s insistence that the Princess’s words “farr Exceeded” the snuffbox’s value also demonstrated her commitment, even in a diary, to a reading of this transaction as a personal and emotional one, despite its political implications. Indeed, the public, political value of the transaction depended upon its appearance as personal and emotional. In her will she singled out what was probably the same gold snuffbox, along with a portrait of her husband, her wedding ring, and a ruby ring, to bequeath to her eldest son – a decision that suggests that the snuffbox continued to hold emotional as well as material value.25 Similarly, the Countess of Portland’s decision to keep, carefully labelled and wrapped in a piece of paper, “The Kings haire cut off & given me at Kensington 1726,” likely combined emotional and status motivations.26 This chapter will examine women’s representations of their activities, addressing the importance of consumption and fashion as well as the various meanings they held for women of quality. The informal and implicit messages communicated through choices in consumption or fashion gave these women a crucial role in asserting elite status. Women not only transmitted and interpreted information about personal character, but also worked to uphold the reputation of their husbands and families. They created their social identity by articulating ideas about appropriate levels of fashion and consumption – and even by rejecting fashionable consumption altogether.

24

Mary, Countess Cowper, diary entry, 20 February 1715/16, HRO D/EP F205. Probate of Countess Cowper’s will, 10 December 1723, HRO D/EP T1147. She referred to it simply as “my Gold Snufbox,” which seems to imply that she had only one. 26 BL Eg. MS 1717, fol. 79. The hair is still there. 25

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Appropriate consumption Women of quality did not simply plunge with abandon into the fashionable world. Instead, they walked a fine line between the imperatives of conspicuous display and the pervasive moral critique of such display. This balance depended on a notion of appropriate levels of consumption and fashion, a flexible concept that left room for different levels of spending or display in different circumstances, but which also carried strong moral overtones. Women could justify their choices on the grounds that they were appropriate for a given situation, but there was no single level of consumption appropriate for all women – even all elite women – at all times. It was even possible for one woman to hold two contradictory views depending on her circumstances; it was common, for instance, to criticize the ubiquity of French fashions, yet the same women who complained about such fashions often avidly sought them out. This behavior should be taken not as hypocrisy but as a reflection of the widely varied connotations that appropriate consumption could bear, from lavish display to self-conscious unfashionability. The self-creation that fashion made possible – and that didactic authors so feared – provided a means for women to tailor their public display to particular audiences.27 But because “appropriate” consumption varied in different circumstances, it was a tool for contesting as well as displaying status. This possibility became particularly marked during the early eighteenth century, when the court ceased to perform its traditional function of providing leadership in fashion trends.28 Without this traditional leadership, decisions about fashion devolved on to members of the Quality themselves. While there were unquestionably individual women who helped set particular trends, and while designs from France were in widespread demand, there was no single source for determining fashions in dress, much less for setting appropriate levels of consumption in other areas.29 The center for all fashionable consumption in Britain was unquestionably London, with the London Season increasingly prominent in the lives of the British elite. Membership in the Quality was impossible without participation

27

Erving Goffman’s idea of performance in daily life emphasizes the importance of adjusting behavior to fit audience expectations and to project a desired image: Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959). On the use of apparel to create public images during the eighteenth century, see Marcia Pointon, Hanging the Head: Portraiture and Social Formation in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 112, 143; BarkerBenfield, Culture of Sensibility, pp. 186, 204; Anne Buck, Dress in Eighteenth-Century England (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1979), p. 201. 28 R. O. Bucholz, The Augustan Court: Queen Anne and the Decline of Court Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), pp. 240–1. 29 For the French influence on fashion, see Buck, Dress; Aileen Ribeiro, Dress in Eighteenth-Century Europe, 1715–1789 (London: B. T. Batsford Ltd., 1984). 140

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in metropolitan culture. This trend is visible in female correspondence, which frequently condemned unfashionable life away from London. In 1717 Lord Strafford’s sister remarked that she shared his wife’s reluctance to live permanently at his Yorkshire estate, for “A Lady must be a strange dragell tale creature” to enjoy such an isolated life.30 The worst insult Lady Catherine Clarke could employ against the “Muscovite Ambassadress” was that “by the fantasticalness of her dress I did conclude she was a country lady who pretended to give a mode.”31 Even other major towns were not immune from criticism. As the Duchess of Queensberry wrote from Edinburgh in 1734, “I have not mett with any one in this Country who doth not Eate with a knif [sic]; & drink a Dish of tea . . . my girle & I have been at an assembly mighty happy she, & I much amused by the many very extradinary [sic] fashions.”32 Two years later Henrietta Knight wrote to the Countess of Hertford, complaining about life in rural Hampshire in similar terms: First of all, know there is but one book in the house and that is the Farrier’s Guide; – there is but one picture, and that is a rose and crown stained upon the window. . . . The gentlemen are booted at 5 in the morning and remain so all day. . . . One of the ladies stays at home and looks after her family, the other does nothing at all, or rides a-shooting or setting; and I stay at home out of complaisance and am idle through necessity. . . . When I mentioned the having drawn the story of Antiochus in a fan (which story I was obliged to inform the company of), I was answered, “What! a married woman employ herself in drawing love stories?” Upon which I immediately changed the discourse to a pudding.33

Boorish country customs were visible not only in behavior but also in taste; no one could claim to be genteel whose reading matter consisted of “parish Law & books of husbandry, or perhaps for their particular entertainment Quarles Emblems, the Pilgrims Progress, Aesops fables & to furnish them with a little ready wit jo Miller’s jests.”34 Merely having consumer goods was not enough; one also had to demonstrate that one was comfortable with them. In 1711 the Countess of Strafford mocked a social climber, whose husband’s ambassadorial post meant that she 30

Lady Arabella Bellew to Lord Strafford, 28 August [1717], BL Add. MS 22228, fols. 42v–43r. 31 Lady Catherine Clarke to Lady Betty Hastings, 5 January [1707/8], in George Hastings Wheler, ed., Hastings Wheler Family Letters [Part 2], 1704–1739 (Wakefield: West Yorkshire Printing Co. (privately printed), 1935), p. 34. 32 Duchess of Queensberry to Countess of Suffolk, Edinburgh, 1 June 1734, BL Add. MS 22626, fol. 65r. 33 Henrietta Knight to Lady Hertford, [Hampshire, c. 1736], in Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, p. 142. 34 Elizabeth Robinson to Anne Donnellan, 20 April 1741, quoted in Sylvia Harcstark Myers, The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in EighteenthCentury England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 92. 141

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now had to have a new personal servant: “I find she is very much transported at his being Plenipotentiary but she say’s those things call’d pages She’s most concern’d at for they are what she has never been used to.”35 Her comment implicitly drew attention to her own comfort with her rank – an issue that was probably particularly important to the Straffords because of their recent promotion to the English peerage. When Lady Rawdon moved to Ireland after her marriage, she claimed to be remarkable there for her taste and fashion. Because her husband’s previous two wives had both died about the same time after getting married, she noted with some amusement that all of Irish society was now waiting for her to drop dead as well, especially since her artfulness in arranging her jewelry made her look quite wealthy. “The effect it had with the Irish girls,” she commented, “was that they were perpetually engaged with the ends of their fingers or the sticks of their fans calculating how many remaining months I had to reign, each one proposing herself for my successor.”36 Their alleged reaction combined ignorance, rudeness, and raw greed. No native Irish woman could live up to the standards of wealth or fashion so effortlessly achieved by Lady Rawdon – or at least so she believed. Yet even women who so self-consciously identified with fashionable, cosmopolitan culture did not necessarily reject the values expressed in moralizing literature that attacked this culture. The concept of appropriate forms of fashion and consumption could be used by women of the beau monde to evaluate others and to justify their own decisions; moreover, the idea linked decisions in these areas not only to status but to morality. Failure to conform to appropriate standards revealed a basic moral failure, while conformity indicated virtue. Recognizing such judgments enables us to avoid the oversimplification of Veblen’s theory of conspicuous consumption, without tying us to an equally rigid alternative. Competitive display was certainly an important factor in aristocratic women’s perceptions of fashion and consumption, and they had a strong investment in demonstrating their wealth and status through lavish purchases, but it was not their only consideration. The presence of a widespread discourse condemning indiscriminate consumption and fashionability as trivial or even dangerous meant that women of quality often sought to portray themselves as embodiments of moderation. The language they chose reflected and shaped their decisions about consumption, as they dealt with their own income levels, their families’ status claims, and the very different circumstances presented by, say, a grand occasion at court or a day at a country retreat. Just as no woman lived her life exclusively in one social situation, neither was there simply one way of

35 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 23 November 1711, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 27r. 36 Elizabeth, Lady Rawdon to Earl of Huntingdon, Dublin, 13 October 1756, Historical Manuscripts Commission (HMC) Hastings III, pp. 129–30.

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understanding appropriate consumption. The conflicting pressures from competitive display and the moral critique of fashion meant that this was always a contested issue. Concern about French fashions in particular was visible in many aristocratic women’s writings. These women were at the center of the debate over luxury and nationalism that was so strong in eighteenth-century English society; as we have seen in Chapter 2, critics used nationalistic language to attack English women’s devotion to French fashions. Yet fashionable society continued to visit France, and English women there often chose to adopt local dress. In 1737 the Countess of Coningsby informed her sister that she had spent a morning in Paris surrounded by local tradespeople, whom she employed to put her “exactly in the French fashion.”37 Others imitated French dress but criticized the French themselves. The Duchess of Montagu wrote to her husband from France that despite her efforts to make herself “as French as I could,” she could not bring herself to pack on the heavy makeup they wore, and she found their hairstyles ridiculous. Yet, she said, “in this manner they sit and talk all at a time, of the beauty of their dress; indeed, I believe they are the most ridiculous people in the world.”38 French fashions were even more heavily criticized when they appeared in England. After visiting Tunbridge Wells in 1750, Lady Jane Coke noted that a woman who had been brought up in France was the current toast, although “she is entirely French, so much so in her behaviour that such an awkward Englishwoman as myself would think her rather odd than pleasing.”39 But there was no escape from French dominance. “As for fashions,” Lady Jane acknowledged at another time, “according to English custom we follow the French Ambassadress.”40 One response to the critique of fashionable consumption was common in the correspondence of many elite women: the insistence that conformity to the broad trends of fashion without its extremes marked the virtuous individual. Here we can see the direct adoption of views held by didactic authors. For women on the margins of the Quality, these concerns could be especially strong. Lady Sarah Cowper’s diary at the turn of the century reveals the discomfort that some women could feel about the conflicting impulses of conformity and morality – a conflict that was probably heightened in her case

37 Countess of Coningsby to her sister, Paris, 20 September 1737, in Letters of Margaret, Countess of Coningsby, from France, in 1737–8 (Medio-Montanis: C. Gilmour (privately printed), 1842), p. 6. 38 Duchess of Montagu to Duke of Montagu, 28 May [c. 1720?], HMC Buccleuch I, pp. 367–8. 39 Lady Jane Coke to Mary Eyre, Saville Row, 21 August 1750, in Mrs. Ambrose (i.e. Florence A. Monica) Rathborne, ed., Letters from Lady Jane Coke to her Friend Mrs. Eyre at Derby 1747–1758 (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., Ltd., 1899), pp. 54–5. 40 Lady Jane Coke to Mary Eyre, Saville Row, 2 January 1750, in Rathborne, ed., Letters from Lady Jane Coke, pp. 41–3.

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by her life as a deeply pious woman of lower social status than her son, the first Earl Cowper. Attending a friend’s birthday celebration in 1701, she wrote rather defensively that she had put on new clothes, “being sensible ’tis as much a fault (tho’ it be my own) for persons of better Rank to undergo themselves, as it is for the meaner to go above.”41 But elsewhere she echoed contemporary moralists in her concern about the spread of corrupting “Frenchify’d” fashions in food and clothing. “What Excess of Luxury do men live in?” she fretted to herself.42 Catherine Talbot, who lived on the edge of elite society as part of an important clerical family and a friend of several noblewomen, frequently debated with herself over her interest in fashion. This journal entry of 1751, after she had spent nearly two hours dressing, is typical: Fie upon Dress! . . . One Comfort that M[other] liked my Dress, she does not love to see me aukward & attending to this Idle (Yet not unnecessary) Matter is obeying Her. Well then is not that Time well Spent? Is it not my Duty? But then how many silly Comparisons & even wishes to be thought to make an agreeable Figure does it put into ones Head? They are not strong ones – but ought I at my age to be liable to mortification at fancying I do not make any Figure at all among a Set of Fine Folks?43

For women like Lady Sarah and Catherine Talbot, the pleasures of fashionable dress were offset by fears of being seen to indulge too much in behavior that they could not so easily rationalize as their more wealthy and powerful friends could. But even for women securely located within the Quality, the language of moderate conformity could appeal, allowing them to argue that they followed the fashion only because it was such a trivial issue, as the didactic writers claimed. Lady Anne Conolly, for instance, complained in 1738 about life in Ireland during a period of royal mourning. Many people stopped wearing mourning as soon as the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland left, she wrote, “but I think one owes it to ones self, to Conform to the Court, in such a triffle as Dress, tho one May be tire’d of it.”44 Writing a letter to Anne Wortley, knowing that it would be read by Anne’s brother Edward, Lady Mary Pierrepont insisted that her real pleasures consisted of “unfashionable diversions” such as reading and learning a foreign language. “Nature is seldom in the wrong, custom always;” she went on,

41

Lady Sarah Cowper, diary entry, 5 May 1701, HRO D/EP F29, p. 86. Lady Sarah Cowper, diary entry, 11 May 1701, HRO D/EP F29, p. 87. 43 Catherine Talbot, journal entry, 18 [December 1751], BL Add. MS 46690, fol. 41. 44 Lady Anne Conolly to Lord Strafford, Leixslip, 18 April [1738], BL Add. MS 22228, fol. 162r–162v. 42

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it is with some regret I follow it in all the impertinencies of dress; the compliance is so trivial, it comforts me: but I am amazed to see it consulted even in the most important occasions of our lives; and that people of good sense in other things can make their happiness consist in the opinions of others, and sacrifice every thing in the desire of appearing in fashion.45

Just as the didactic authors suggested, Lady Mary distinguished between a moderate adherence to fashion and placing too much weight on such concerns. This stance enabled her to demonstrate her elite status while also claiming a higher level of virtue than her contemporaries. Nor did women of quality always indulge in indiscriminately lavish consumption, even when they might seem to have free rein. When the Countess of Hertford described her husband’s dress for a royal review of his local militia in 1722, she noted with equal pride that he looked spectacular and that the silver fringe on his waistcoat was recycled from his wedding waistcoat, “so fresh that it passed for new and was much better because it cost nothing.” Such recycling of clothing was common even among the nobility.46 Mourning also frequently brought out women’s practical side. In 1712, Lady Strafford wrote to her husband that she had delayed getting new livery for her servants since she believed her brother-in-law was about to die of smallpox, which would require putting the staff into gray clothes.47 Faced with the need to wear mourning at court, Dorothy Dyves similarly sought the most efficient use of her available resources. She wrote to her aunt asking whether it would be appropriate “instead of buying a white tabby, having a white and gold for the Birthday, and after that day, take the coloured lining out and wear it for mourning, which I think will be very genteel and agreeable.”48 Those fashions and diversions – such as hoop petticoats, gaming, and plays – that were considered particularly morally dubious were the most problematic. Mary Delany praised her sister for disliking large hoops, remarking of herself, “I keep within bounds, endeavouring to avoid all particularities of being too much in or out of fashion.”49 Although Lady Elizabeth Ramsden 45 Lady Mary Pierrepont to Anne Wortley, 8 August 1709, in Halsband, ed., Complete Letters, 1: 6. 46 Lady Hertford to Grace Thynne, [September 1722], in Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, p. 72; see also Lady Mary Monthermer to Duchess of Marlborough, 27 September [1705?], BL Add. MS 61450, fol. 22r–22v. On reuse of clothes, see Buck, Dress, p. 183. 47 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 25 November 1712, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 233r. 48 Dorothy Dyves to Charlotte Clayton, 11 October 1725, in Mrs. Thomson, ed., Memoirs of Viscountess Sundon, Mistress of the Robes to Queen Caroline, Consort of George II.; Including Letters from the Most Celebrated Persons of Her Time, 2 vols. (London: Henry Colburn, 1847), 1: 122. 49 Mary Delany to Ann Dewes, [August 1750], in Lady Llanover, ed., The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany: With Interesting Reminiscences of King George the Third and Queen Charlotte, 1st ser., 3 vols. (London: Richard Bentley, 1861–2), 2: 580.

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admitted that quadrille was a fashionable pastime, she felt uncomfortable about its moral implications. “I cant think it either a very useful or commendable way of spending one’s whole time as I find many do,” she wrote, insisting that she avoided it as much as possible. Yet, she concluded, “if one absolutely refuses it one must not expect ever to be let into any body’s house.”50 In 1714 Countess Cowper recorded in her diary that she had refused to engage in high-stakes gambling at court, which they rallyd me for, but I told my Mistress [the Princess of Wales] I playd out of duty and not inclination & having 4 Children no body woud think ill of me if for their sakes I desir’d to save my money. When I did not do any thing that was mean dishonest or dishonourable to do it, for which she commended me, & said she thought the Principal duty of a Woman was to take care of her Children.51

Two decades later, Lady Irwin also found herself fearful for both her “conduct and fortune,” when she was instructed to gamble as part of her duties as a Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess of Wales – but she obeyed nonetheless.52 After Mary Delany went to see a performance of Colley Cibber’s sentimental comedy The Careless Husband, she strove to articulate a justification for her decision: “I should like to see a play once a month, as when well chosen I think they are a rational and pleasing entertainment even for old people who have health and spirits to go, and who frequent no other public places.”53 Cibber’s play was hardly an example of the lewd theater attacked by most social critics, yet Mrs. Delany was uncomfortably aware that all plays could be seen as morally suspect. This ambiguity toward fashion, marked by a sense of the importance of appropriate levels of display and conformity to social norms rather than the simple glorification of ostentatious wealth, typified the attitudes of many women of quality toward all forms of fashion and consumption, and provided the discursive framework through which they presented themselves to a variety of audiences. It also formed the basis of their evaluation of others’ levels of consumption, and often served as a reference point for their approval (or disapproval) of an individual’s personal character. Naturally, in many instances these women considered the display of wealth and finery as appropriate, particularly for rites of passage or public events such as births, funerals, and coronations.54 Lady Irwin wrote approvingly of a celebration given for the Prince’s birthday in January 1733, which featured “96 dishes; 50 Lady Elizabeth Ramsden to Lady Betty Hastings, 17 January [c. 1726], in Hastings Wheler, ed., Hastings Wheler Letters, pp. 82–3. 51 Lady Cowper, diary entry, 15 November 1714, HRO D/EP F205. 52 Anne, Viscountess Irwin to Lord Carlisle, 1 January [1737], HMC Carlisle, p. 175. 53 Mary Delany to Ann Dewes, Delville, [?] February 1751, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 3: 16. See also Mary Delany to Ann Dewes, Delville, 17 March 1759, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 3: 541. 54 Beckett, Aristocracy, pp. 344–5.

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beans, peas, and all the rarities that could be thought on” – a reflection of the luxury of out-of-season produce.55 For her first appearance after her marriage, at a royal birthday, Lady Anne Strafford wore a set of diamond jewelry and a velvet gown heavily encrusted with diamonds and gold trim.56 A few years later she asked her husband to send her, and Lord Strafford’s unmarried sister Betty, their new clothes in time for another birthday, “for Lady Portland maks news [sic] ones for that day for her self & Daughter & severall more Lady’s & it would be very strang for my sister & I to be in Old Cloth’s who indeed has more reason to be in new than any body here.”57 She was writing from The Hague, while her husband was temporarily absent from his diplomatic post there; thus her request for new clothes rested on an appeal to his pride. She knew that in this as in all her other appearances in public places, her apparel would be read in terms of its implications for her entire family’s status. Even such ornate apparel was not seen strictly in terms of monetary value, however; for some women of quality, it could also reveal moral characteristics. The didactic writers’ distinction between outward fashion and inward virtue was thus rendered more complex, even among women who chose to use the moralists’ language. How a woman wore her clothes was as significant as the apparel itself. In 1713, Lady Dupplin admired her brother Lord Harley’s new bride at her first appearance at court: “there was a vast Court every body wished her joy & great staring at her you may be sure but she went through that fatigue with all the ease that could be & none could make a finer figure, her Clothes & lace extreamly fine & well Chose.”58 Lady Harley’s poise and grace were for Lady Dupplin directly reflected in the clothes she chose to wear; the apparel confirmed her status not only by its cost but by her ease in wearing it. Describing a new acquaintance in 1756, Mary Delany admired her fine clothes, but, echoing the language of the moralists, added that “her modest, unaffected air gives a lustre to all her finery that would be only tinsel without it.”59 The rhetoric surrounding fashion could also have political overtones. In 1716, Lady Cowper initially used moralizing language when she noted in her diary that another courtier had lent her an emerald necklace to wear for a royal birthday. “I accepted,” she wrote, “rather because it was offer’d & I was 55

Lady Anne Irwin to Lord Carlisle, 23 January [1733], HMC Carlisle, p. 98. Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, 5 February 1711/12, BL Add. MS 22225, fol. 225r; same to same, St. James’s Square, 11 December 1711, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 42v. For a description of her clothes, see Lady Isabella Wentworth to Lord Strafford, 5 February [1711/12], BL Add. MS 22225, fol. 224r, in which Lady Strafford’s letter was enclosed. On the “new life and significance” of observations of the royal birthday during Anne’s reign, see Bucholz, Augustan Court, p. 213. 57 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, The Hague, 30 January 1713/14, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 393r. 58 Lady Dupplin to [Abigail Harley], London, 19 September 1713, BL Add. MS 70147. 59 Mary Delany to Ann Dewes, [London], 16 March 1756, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 3: 413. 56

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afraid of disobliging her, than to make my self fine, (for I dont care one farthing for setting my self out, & I hope always to make it my Study rather to adorn my mind, than sett of[f], a Vile body of dust & ashes).” But she went on in the same entry to complain that another courtier, from the German contingent, had asked to borrow her own pearl necklace. Not wanting to help the German woman make a fine figure at her own expense, Lady Cowper wrote that the necklace was “of so great Value I thought I had as good put it into my hair.”60 Despite her insistence that she did not care about personal adornment, she recognized the importance of such adornment in the competitive world of the court, and was determined to wear as much jewelry as she could. Her investment in both the discourse linking fashion to immorality and the political value of courtly display thus led to a discontinuity between her own behavior and her language in describing that behavior, even in the privacy of a diary. Political motivations behind choices in dress could be subject to ridicule, as in the Spectator’s famous essay mocking women for using beauty patches to demonstrate their party affiliations.61 Perhaps consciously echoing that work, Lady Mary Pierrepont joked that fashions in hairdressing followed political allegiances; those who supported the High Church (the Tories) wore “Heads in the Imitation of Steeples,” while those, like herself, in “the low Party” (the Whigs) wore “little low Heads.”62 Yet behind such humorous remarks lay a recognition that choices in apparel helped shape public perceptions, even create political statements. Mary Delany was one of a group of women in the Anglo-Irish elite who chose to wear Irish-made fabrics to court in support of the local economy, and she portrayed this action as a sign of “public-spirited” intent.63 The Countess of Scarborough wrote during one of the Duchess of Marlborough’s periods out of favor that she was pleased to hear that Sarah had been “drest” for the royal birthday. Wearing special clothes for the occasion suggested that the Duchess might be returning to court favor, and Lady Scarborough hoped that Sarah would continue to have a use for fine clothes for many years.64 When the Prince of Wales was married in 1736, one observer 60

Lady Cowper, diary entry, 16 February 1715/16, HRO D/EP F205; see also Lady Cowper, diary entry, 18 February 1715/16, HRO D/EP F205. 61 Spectator 81 (2 June 1711), in Donald F. Bond, ed., The Spectator, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 1: 347. 62 Lady Mary Pierrepont to Anne Justice, c. 3 February 1711, in Halsband, ed., Complete Letters, 1: 70–1. 63 Mary Delany to Ann Dewes, Delville, 18 January 1745/6, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 2: 414. See also same to same, Delville, 25 January 1745/6, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 2: 415. Helen Burke, “Putting on Irish ‘Stuff’: The Politics of Anglo-Irish Cross-Dressing,” in The Clothes That Wear Us: Essays on Dressing and Transgressing in Eighteenth-Century Culture, ed. Jessica Munns and Penny Richards (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999), pp. 233–49. 64 Frances, Countess of Scarborough to Duchess of Marlborough, [1708–10?], BL Add. MS 61456, fol. 66r. 148

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noted that the “finery” worn for the occasion by those attending was spectacular, especially since “those of the country party distinguished themselves as much by their clothes as those of the household.” She believed that the popularity of the new Princess was responsible for this show of support.65 Material goods as well as clothing revealed not only an individual’s or family’s claim to social rank, but also less tangible characteristics like gentility and taste. Women of quality often saw men’s gifts to their betrothed or recent brides as indications of character as well as wealth. In 1708 Lady Barbara Arundell emphasized the wisdom of her choice in a new husband by explaining that “he has furnished his House quite new he tells me, & by the description it is very fine, & tho he made a new Coach this Spring yet would have had me bespoke another.”66 Mary Pendarves similarly interpreted costly gifts as a good omen for a marriage; after detailing the beauty and value of diamonds given to Lady Sunderland by her new husband, Mary concluded, “I hope she will be very happy; I think there is a great appearance of her being so: her house is charmingly furnished with pictures, glasses, tapestry, and damask, all superfine in their kind.”67 Later, when Mary married Patrick Delany, she interpreted his gifts slightly differently. After receiving presents of clothing and jewelry, she wrote to her sister that “the diamond is a brilliant, but such gems are only valuable when they are testimonials of a kind and affectionate heart; as such to me they are inestimable.”68 Nor was marriage the only occasion when gifts like this held significance. Lady Catherine Clarke, for example, wrote to Lady Betty Hastings thanking her profusely for giving her a pearl necklace: It would be in vain for me in this paper to attempt expressing [how] very sensibly I am obliged with the least of your Ladyship favours and say how much I am honoured with the string of pearls your Ladyship has sent me which distinguishing mark of your Ladyship kindness I shall always esteem as the most valuable jewel I was ever mistress of.69

This tendency to read intangible qualities into possessions also carried over into less intimate transactions. Lady Wentworth expressed her approval of an acquaintance by giving a detailed description of his furnishings, from wall hangings to china and silver, culminating with his wife, a “very prety Genteel 65

Lady M. Killmorey to Lady Anne Hastings, 4 May 1736, in Hastings Wheler, ed., Hastings Wheler Letters, p. 129. 66 Lady Barbara Arundell to Duchess of Marlborough, 15 September [1708], BL Add. MS 61456, fols. 140v–141r. 67 Mary Pendarves to Ann Granville, 12 December 1724, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 1: 100–1. 68 Mary Delany to Ann Granville, Delville, 24 August 1745, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 2: 380. 69 Lady Catherine Clarke to Lady Betty Hastings, 5 January [1707/8], in Hastings Wheler, ed., Hastings Wheler Letters, p. 34. Hastings Wheler does not expand the contractions. 149

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young woman.”70 Consumer goods conveyed information about their owners not only through market values but also through a commonly accepted vision of how constellations of objects defined an individual’s social identity.71 Yet if fine possessions and clothes often appeared to imply good moral character, they could still be criticized when used in the wrong way. Discussing men’s apparel at court in 1722, Sarah Osborn reflected disapprovingly, I believe the gentlemen will ware petty-cotes very soon, for many of their Coats were like our Mantuas. Lord Essex had a silver tissue Coat, and pink colour lutestring wascote, and several had pink colour and pale blue padeswoy Coats, which lookd prodigiously effeminate.72

Lady North criticized one family for dressing their girls like fashionable adults too early: “The little one wears a sack; so does Lady Thanet’s little girl, and they look like little old women.”73 Similarly, when she visited the Duke of Kingston’s estate, she paid particular attention to the belongings of the Duke’s mistress. “Her cloth was laid in all form for dinner in the hall and her apartment excessive handsome, and just as one should suppose the Duchess of Kingston would be,” she wrote, “A red satin vast hoop lay upon the bed, and a white sack; his bedchamber next to hers.”74 The richness of these goods was intriguing because it suggested that the mistress aspired to the same status as a legitimate wife. In contrast, when Sir Robert Walpole’s wife, who had been his mistress for years before they wed, died in 1738, Lady Catherine Jones noted approvingly that Sir Robert “kept up to great decency since her death which is quite out of fashion madam in the Grand Mound [i.e. Monde]. She was carried down to Norfolk by five in the morning with only two coaches following her hearse with her servants to attend her which I think perfectly right.”75 By keeping her funeral pomp to a minimum, Sir Robert showed his unfashionable “decency.” Cases like these reveal the way in which some women of quality chose to stress their own moderation and reason. But they also show how these women 70 Lady Wentworth to Lord Strafford, 19 May [1713], BL Add. MS 22225, fol. 288v. In a discussion of the conversation piece, Marcia Pointon analyzes the role of material goods displayed within paintings, in order to show the ways in which images of objects were used to present the desired patriarchal and dynastic messages: Pointon, Hanging the Head, p. 162. 71 On the importance of understanding objects in their relation to one another rather than in isolation, see McCracken, Culture and Consumption, ch. 8. 72 Sarah Osborn to Robert Byng, Conduit Street, 2 June 1722, in Emily F. D. Osborn, ed., Political and Social Letters of a Lady of the Eighteenth Century, 1721–1771 (New York: Dodd Mead & Company, 1891), p. 23. 73 Elizabeth, Lady North to Lady Kaye, 16 August [1739], HMC Dartmouth III, p. 161. 74 Elizabeth, Lady North to Lady Kaye, Nottingham, [July? 1739], in HMC Dartmouth III, p. 158. 75 Lady Catherine Jones to Lady Betty Hastings, 6 September [1738], in Hastings Wheler, ed., Hastings Wheler Letters, pp. 164–5.

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could draw attention to improper indulgence in fashionable consumption as a way of revealing others’ moral failings. Because of the pervasive discourse condemning many fashionable activities while accepting fashion in moderation, consumption – with its implications of idleness, wasteful extravagance, and neglect of domestic duties – could be used as a moral prism through which to view others’ faults. Every time women did so, they emphasized their own success in moderating display with restraint. Lady Strafford, engaged in an ongoing conflict with her sister-in-law Mrs. Arundell, was quick to exploit this moralizing language. In 1711, for instance, she associated Mrs. Arundell’s poor housekeeping with her indulgence in luxuries: “such a Dirty place sure no body ever went into & they eat Jelly and Drink Chockolet from morning tell night.”76 Lady Strafford also criticized other women for inappropriate grandeur, which she saw as a sign of misplaced pride. In 1738, she remarked disapprovingly that Lady Huntingdon had postponed her baby’s christening in order to plan a “monsterouse Entertainment” for the occasion.77 Of course, neither of these women would have agreed with Lady Strafford’s assessment. Lady Huntingdon’s lavish christening, for instance, was not unusual in the Quality; Lady Strafford herself dressed her first-born child in an expensive Brussels lace christening gown.78 But because levels of consumption could be and were contested, ideas about appropriate consumption provided an extremely flexible vocabulary with which to express moral judgments. Other women used similar language to voice disapproval; too much display in either men or women was a moral shortcoming. In 1693 Lady Annabella Howard expressed such an opinion about Lord Radnor, who had just inherited great wealth. After listing the huge sums of money he was laying out on pictures, a coach, and linen, she sniffed, “in fine he setts up higher then any body.”79 Lady Wentworth similarly complained that Lady Derwentwater’s upstart new husband flaunted the wealth she had brought him by taking his coach and two footmen to the coffee house every day, although everyone else was content to walk there.80 Lady North even suggested that such luxurious indulgence was a sort of madness. “Lady Susan lives at a great rate,” she wrote in 1739, “sends Burgundy and Champagne to whom ever she dines with, says 76 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 27 November 1711, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 31r. 77 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 3 January 1737/38, BL Add. MS 31145, fol. 200r. 78 Lady Isabella Wentworth to Lord Strafford, 23 January [1712/13], BL Add. MS 22225, fol. 351r–351v; Lady Wentworth to Lord Strafford, 13 March [1713], BL Add. MS 22225, fol. 391r. Beckett, Aristocracy, pp. 344–5; Adrian Wilson, “The Ceremony of Childbirth and Its Interpretation,” in Women as Mothers in Pre-Industrial England, ed. Valerie Fildes (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 81. 79 Lady Annabella Howard to Countess of Marlborough, [May 1693], BL Add. MS 61455, fol. 142v. 80 Lady Isabella Wentworth to Lord Raby, 9 September [1707], BL Add. MS 22225, fol. 34v.

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she keeps 30 servants, has a town and a country coachman, spends a 100 pounds of butter every week, and in short is very near being only fit to be locked up with clean straw.”81 Didactic authors sought to exclude women entirely from the public realm by defining them as consumers, and consumption as trivial and private, but aristocratic women could also use moralizing attacks on luxurious indulgence as a means of political criticism. Visiting France in 1730, Lady Irwin wrote to her father that the much-despised former director of the South Sea Company, Robert Knight, was there, “and is quite metamorphised [sic] into a fine gentleman; from being a man of business he is now become a gallant homme, which character just as ill becomes him as a suit o [sic] embroidery would a country bumkin.”82 Even disputes over consumption in the context of apparently private, familial relations could be read in terms of their political repercussions. In 1712, Lady Strafford complained to her husband that “Sister Arundell is run mad with Pride for I never see any take so much state upon in my life as she dos & because she could not be as fine as I & goe to Court on the [royal] Birth[day] . . . she would not com to se me drest.” But the Countess admitted that she had to maintain good relations with Mrs. Arundell because of the latter’s close friendship with Queen Anne’s current favorite.83 Using similar terms, in 1726 Abigail Harley wrote her nephew a series of letters detailing the ill treatment of her niece, the Countess of Kinnoul, at the hands of her husband. The Earl had left Edinburgh for London, leaving Lady Kinnoul to find her own way there after him. In February Abigail commented, “I neither have nor desire to see the E: of K: ll who often appears with Sir Rt. Wal-l in his Chariot.” And a few weeks later she noted sarcastically that “The Earl was very fine, in blew Velvet at the Princes’s Court Tuesday told them his Lady was upon the road that He expected her, with great Passion, in town that night or the next.”84 Her personal dislike of the Earl combined with her political disapproval of him for associating with Robert Walpole, while his dress and the chariot served as visible proof of 81 Elizabeth, Lady North to Lady Kaye, 16 August [1739], HMC Dartmouth III, p. 160. See also same to same, 2 September [1739?], HMC Dartmouth III, p. 161. 82 Lady Irwin to Lord Carlisle, [Paris, c. June–Sept 1730], HMC Carlisle, p. 77. 83 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 8 February 1711/12, BL Add. MS 22226, fols. 290v–291r. On the extent and limits of Abigail Masham’s political power, see Bucholz, Augustan Court, pp. 155–6, 165–72. 84 Abigail Harley to Edward, Earl of Oxford, London, 8 February 1725/6, BL Add. MS 70379, fol. 154r; same to same, London, 3 March 1725/6, BL Add. MS 70379, fol. 162r. Abigail Harley was not alone in her assessment of Kinnoul; his financial extravagance had forced his wife and children to depend on her father, Lord Oxford, for financial support, and in 1737 she was granted a pension by the King, so settled that Lord Kinnoul could not touch it. Lady Strafford, for one, approved of this arrangement. Jonathan Swift, Journal to Stella, ed. Harold Williams, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), 1: 45, n.39; Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 31 December 1737, BL Add. MS 31145, fol. 194v.

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his failings. In all these cases, drawing attention to others’ inappropriate consumption implicitly also drew attention to these women’s own moral superiority. Even though just what was “inappropriate” could be contested, there was general agreement that such boundaries did exist.

Rejecting fashionable consumption The recognition of appropriate consumption, rather than simply conspicuous consumption, explains some aristocratic women’s recurring insistence that they rejected all the lures of fashionable life, despite their apparent social investment in such activities. Because of the dangers associated with life in the beau monde, there existed a powerful justification on which women could draw to explain their distance from the fashionable world.85 In 1739, Lady Irwin wrote to her father that political affairs were in disarray. “However,” she added in significantly gendered language, this unhappy situation of our affairs does not hinder the generality of the world from fulfilling the Scripture of letting the morrow take care for itself; they eat, drink, make balls, and run in debt, and do everything but pay for their extravagances. This is, I believe, the general situation of the people here, and upon the whole I can but think London is a kind of mistress, dissolute in principle, loose in practice, and extravagant in pleasure; and if a man long keeps such a lady, he will surely be undone.86

Each new disaster seemed to call for a moral reformation, but none came. In the midst of a cattle distemper a decade later, Lady Jane Coke remarked that although the tenants in the countryside were impoverished, “London is as gay as ever, and insensible of all these misfortunes. Assemblies abound, the Duchess of Bedford has a general one every Friday during Lent.”87 Shortly after the earthquake of 1756, Mary Delany complained, “Earthquakes are forgotten, assemblies and balls go on as briskly as if no such warning had been given; indeed, if we stop there it might be innocent, but luxury of all kinds and gaming run higher than ever.”88 Even without the impetus of disaster to spur moral reflection, some fashionable entertainments made irresistible targets. “Bragg [a card game] flourishes as much as ever, and I believe ruins half the women in town,” remarked Lady Jane Coke in 1751.89 In 1723 Anne Bateman reported 85

Chapter 2, above. See also Barker-Benfield, Culture of Sensibility, p. 199. Lady Irwin to Lord Carlisle, 6 February [1729], HMC Carlisle, p. 57. 87 Lady Jane Coke to Mary Eyre, Longford, “Tuesday morn.” [March 1749], in Rathborne, ed., Letters from Lady Jane Coke, pp. 28–9. 88 Mary Delany to Ann Dewes, Spring Gardens, 1 April 1756, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 3: 419–20. 89 Lady Jane Coke to Mary Eyre, Saville Row, 19 January 1751, in Rathborne, ed., Letters from Lady Jane Coke, p. 67. 86

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with shock that a lady of Ripon had sponsored a horse race in which nine women “rid astride, were dressed in drawers, waistcoats and jockey caps, their shapes transparent, and a vast concourse of people to see them. I think the lady who was the benefactress to this indecent diversion should have made the tenth in number,” she concluded.90 Another woman noted with horror that the latest trend was to give balls at taverns for “young ladies of fashon.”91 When Lady Anne Wentworth was invited to one of these balls, she refused, since “a party at a tavern was what niether Mamma nor I much aproved of.”92 Women could also use such language more lightly, for rhetorical effect. The Duchess of Marlborough was far from a social recluse, but in 1704 she wrote to one correspondent, “You are extremely obliging to think so much of a poor country person, who is really so dull as to like this sort of life much better than anything I can propose.”93 When Lady Mary Hervey invited a friend to visit her in London, she promised him scandal and foolishness – “In short, you will see and hear of every kind of luxury and of vice, without delicacy, taste, or pleasure” – but she still hoped he would visit “a sincere friend.”94 Lady Irwin had gained a reputation at court for knowledge of astronomy, she told her father in 1739, but “This is no commendation, for ignorance in all parts of learning, both in men and women who belong to the Court, is as universal as affectation, neither of which I would willingly be infected with.” To escape the “contagion,” she read Pope and Addison.95 Frances Boscawen informed her husband that she was avoiding a ridotto because “I don’t know one creature that stays at home – the whole town goes – therefore I conclude there’ll be no room for me.”96 Their tone was light, but these women used the implicit possibility of participating in fashion to emphasize their virtuous restraint. Similarly, the rhetoric against fashionable conventions could be used to demonstrate aristocratic women’s social confidence. Such language transformed what might be a mark of disrespect into a sign of sincerity and true 90 Anne Bateman to Abigail Harley, London, 28 September 1723, HMC Portland V, p. 635. 91 Viscountess Kilmorey to Countess of Huntingdon, London, 6 March 1730/1, HMC Hastings III, p. 6. 92 Lady Anne Wentworth to Countess of Huntingdon, London, 27 February 1731[/2], HMC Hastings III, p. 11. 93 Duchess of Marlborough to Earl of Montagu, Windsor Park, 18 November [1704], HMC Buccleuch I, p. 353. 94 Lady Mary Hervey to Mr. Morris, London, 23 March 1756, in Letters of Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. With A Memoir, and Illustrative Notes (London: John Murray, 1821), pp. 216–17. 95 Lady Irwin to Lord Carlisle, Kew, 19 December 1737, HMC Carlisle, p. 191. 96 Frances Boscawen to Edward Boscawen, George Street, 24 March 1747, in Cecil Aspinall-Oglander, ed., Admiral’s Wife: Being the Life and Letters of The Hon. Mrs. Edward Boscawen from 1719 to 1761 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1940), p. 31.

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friendship. When the Duchess of Buckingham sent Charlotte Clayton a gift of venison, she insisted that she meant to send “a plain country present to an agreeable acquaintance, and not a tribute to a court lady. . . . I designed Mr. Clayton a direct farmer’s compliment, a piece of mutton; but my servants have mistook, and sent me only venison this time.”97 In a letter to Henrietta Howard, Martha Blount used informality in dress to demonstrate artlessness in her nature; she was eager to see Henrietta “tho my french gown is not yet arrived: but every time I’ve seen you I’ve had so many reasons to like you, and so very little to fear you, that I shall soon chuse to be as undressed in my mind to you, as I’m now obliged to be in my person.”98 Being “undressed” – that is, wearing less formal attire – she suggested, demonstrated her lack of reserve with Henrietta, and therefore the sincerity of her friendship. But this sort of informality was only possible because these women could assume that their correspondents would acknowledge their elite status. The rhetorical convention of rejecting fashionable society played an especially important role for Henrietta Knight after she separated from her husband Robert in 1736.99 Because she was exiled to Warwickshire when Robert accused her of adultery, she could not rely on participation in the usual rounds of fashionable London society to assert her status. But at the same time, membership in the Quality was especially important to her in coping with the humiliation of her exile. She thus chose paradoxically to emphasize her urbanity through an ostentatious rejection of fashionable society – a strategy that depended on her correspondents’ awareness of this rejection as itself a fashionable convention. In her letters to her friend William Shenstone, whose Worcestershire estate, the Leasowes – known as a “Ferme ornée” – was widely visited by tourists, she called Barrells her “Ferme negligée” and constantly stressed its rusticity. In 1750 she sent him a gift of various fowls, with the note that “This rural tribute Barrells humbly pays to its Lord the Leasowes.”100 A year later she remarked that his estate was 97 Duchess of Buckingham to Charlotte Clayton, n.d., in Thomson, ed., Sundon Memoirs, 1: 142. 98 Martha Blount to Henrietta Howard, [n.d.], BL Add. MS 22626, fols. 11v–12r. 99 He was the son of the Robert Knight who was the Director of the South Sea Company. In 1746 he received an Irish barony, and he and Henrietta, though estranged, became Lord and Lady Luxborough. 100 Henrietta, Baroness Luxborough, to William Shenstone, Barrells, 30 June 1750, in Letters Written by the Late Right Honourable Lady Luxborough, to William Shenstone, Esq. (London: J. Dodsley, 1775), p. 212. On the Leasowes, see Tom Williamson, Polite Landscapes: Gardens and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), pp. 59–60; Ann Bermingham, Landscape and Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 30 and p. 202, nn. 49, 50; Kimerly Rorschach, The Early Georgian Landscape Garden (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 1983), pp. 38–45; Michel Baridon, “The Gentleman as Gardener: Pope, Shenstone, Mason,” in The Crisis of Courtesy, ed. Jacques Carré (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), pp. 129–41, especially p. 137.

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increasingly visited by “the beau monde; nor do I wonder at it; but I think the Masters of the Vauxhalls, Ranelaghs, and the Playhouses in the neighbourhood ought to file a bill against you, for decoying their company from them.”101 By aligning herself with Shenstone, she placed them both in the position of attracting fashionable society without needing it themselves, while mentioning Vauxhall and Ranelagh rhetorically associated their provincial estates with the pleasure gardens of London. Her ironic rejection of elegance and fashion emphasized her claims to politeness, claims that were aimed not at securing her reputation within her local, provincial community but at continuing her connections with the London-based cosmopolitan society from which she had been exiled.102 Thus she dealt with the inherent shame of her position and the damage to her reputation by creating an image of rural rusticity. Yet this image depended for its effect on both her and her correspondents’ recognition that this was strictly a rhetorical gesture, that her position as a woman of quality was still intact. As with her discussion of Shenstone’s estate, Henrietta tried to use her own patterns of consumption, particularly in her extensive landscaping at Barrells, to create a persona of virtue in exile by drawing on the images and language of pastoral idylls. Her strategy depended for its effectiveness on the common convention of glorifying rural simplicity and sincerity, which held widespread currency among the Quality. During the eighteenth century, sentimental fiction and art criticism developed an aesthetic that valued pastoral landscape and rural innocence over the temptations of worldly society. Yet because of the commercialization that came with such literary productions and the elite education on which it was based, the new aesthetic was inherently part of the very society it claimed to reject. The taste necessary to respond to the aesthetic of nature was a product of a cosmopolitan education and its values.103 Henrietta’s attitude toward her estate mirrored and embodied this paradox, as in her rhapsodies over “the delicious prospect of . . . the various labours of the peasant.”104 By filling her gardens with the 101 Lady Luxborough to William Shenstone, Barrells, 22 July 1751, in Letters to Shenstone, p. 284. 102 That Henrietta still saw herself as part of the fashionable society is supported by contemporary records; her Bath lodgings were referred to as the place most preferred by “People of Fortune,” and during one visit she was placed first in the list of new arrivals printed in the Bath newspaper, in order of precedence: Marjorie Williams, Lady Luxborough Goes to Bath (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1946), pp. 8, 11. 103 Brewer, Pleasures of the Imagination, ch. 16; Peter Burke, “Res et Verba: Conspicuous Consumption in the Early Modern World,” in Brewer and Porter, eds., Consumption and the World of Goods, pp. 148–61. 104 Lady Luxborough to William Shenstone, Barrells, 16 October 1748, in Letters to Shenstone, p. 55; Barker-Benfield, Culture of Sensibility, p. 206; Bermingham, Landscape and Ideology, pp. 10–14; Janet Todd, Sensibility: An Introduction (London: Methuen, 1986), pp. 55–7, 59. On the impact of rural life and classical pastoralism on trends in dress, see Buck, Dress, p. 203.

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Image not available

Figure 5 Henrietta St. John, Lady Luxborugh. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. Shelfmark 11916.ff.9. From Horace Walpole, A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England, Scotland, and Ireland; with Lists of Their Works: By the Late Horatio Walpole, Earl of Orford. Enlarged and Continued to the Present Time, by Thomas Park, F.S.A. (London: John Scott, 1806), Vol. 5, facing p. 260. Estranged from her husband, Henrietta Knight coped with her exile in Warwickshire by maintaining cultural and social ties with cosmopolitan society through her landscaping and literary endeavors.

objects of fashionable landscaping and her house with busts of favorite poets like Alexander Pope, she participated in cosmopolitan culture even though she never returned to London. Henrietta’s letters reveal ceaseless activity, a constant stream of “improvements” that have an air of rustic landscaping trends run amok. A single, typical example will suffice here: 157

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I must tell you of my changes at this cottage. Mr. Outing [a friend] has put O Venus Regina Gnidi in the new Pavilion over Venus’s Shrine, opposite my house, instead of over the Summer-house door, where it was; from which Summer-house I have banished the two motto’s on the side-doors, as you advised. The Piping Fawn is retired from the front of the Aviary to his post in the Wood, where he stands in the Double Oak. . . . I have found a kind of natural arbor in the Coppice, with an oak in it, under which I have a mind to raise a bank of turf and put my Tapping Fawn upon it to dance.105

Her life apparently revolved around the construction of new temples, summer houses, aviaries, statues, urns, and inscriptions, while her work on the interior of her house was almost as extensive. Yet her constant activity to surround herself with such objects cannot be seen simply as the hobby of a bored woman, though that probably played a part. Through these material alterations she connected herself to a culture from which her husband had exiled her. Writing to Shenstone while redoing her front courtyard, she announced, “I am all over embroidered with dust and mortar daily; but should prefer it to embroidery of another kind, if I thought it would please you; as you are the only touchstone of true taste that I can have recourse to here.”106 Her activities combined an obsession with fashionable design with an overt rejection of such fashion, such as her self-conscious dismissal of feminine embroidery in favor of “dust and mortar.” Classical and pastoral statuary and other furnishings similarly combined the benefits of fashionability with references to anti-cosmopolitan conventions. Henrietta’s friend, the Countess of Hertford, also used the rejection of fashionable society to create a persona of rural simplicity, despite her high rank and position at court. As we saw in Chapter 4, she self-consciously stressed her domestic interests. She also frequently expressed her disapproval of the court society of which she was a part. In 1724, for example, she complained to her mother that “French dress” was the reigning fashion at court, which she said she was “sorry for,” though she added that her own chambermaid was at the time in France to learn hairstyling.107 A few years 105 Lady Luxborough to William Shenstone, 8 September 1749, in Letters to Shenstone, p. 121. I have found no illustrations of her estate other than a small print of the house at Barrells, taken from an almanac published after Henrietta’s death, in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It shows none of the grounds: V&A Prints Room: Peacock’s Polite Repository (almanac, 1796) facing June 1796; in 1798 packet. Such excesses of classical statuary among the nouveau riche were mocked in the English press during the late eighteenth century: James Raven, “Defending Conduct and Property: The London Press and the Luxury Debate,” in Early Modern Conceptions of Property, ed. John Brewer and Susan Staves (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 306. 106 Lady Luxborough to William Shenstone, 16 April [?1750], in Letters to Shenstone, p. 256. 107 Lady Hertford to Grace Thynne, [12 June] 1724, in Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, p. 86.

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later she reported to a friend that mixtures of French and English fashions were all the rage, but insisted, “I own myself so awkward as to be yet unable to use myself to that dress, unless for visits of ceremony, since I do not feel myself at home in my own house without an apron, nor can endure a hoop that would overturn all the chairs and tables in my closet.”108 When telling her son of a bill in the House of Commons against the use of precious metals in clothing, she noted that it would be terrible in its effects of ruining many tradespeople, yet, she added, “in my own particular, I should be very glad to be forbid spending money for a load that never gave me a moment’s pleasure when I was young, and, therefore, is not likely to be more agreeable to me in the latter part of life.”109 She thus participated in fashionable society while claiming to reject that society. When she grew older and retired from court, this persona became even more important to her. What had begun as a rhetorical gesture increasingly reflected her actual behavior, as she remained at her Wiltshire estate. At the same time, however, she could maintain contact with her friends at court because of her long-established pattern of such rhetoric. One reason for Lady Hertford’s use of this rhetorical convention, then, came with her recognition that aging implied a change of status and different social roles. The importance of dressing and acting appropriately for one’s age was widely accepted in English society, and social critics frequently attacked the foolish vanity of middle-aged or old women acting as if they were still young, when they should long since have outgrown a taste for such behavior.110 Lady Hertford’s frequent references to her retirement from court served as an explicit recognition of these changes, which inevitably involved a loss of social power as she dropped out of the center of elite social and political life. We can see a similar instance in Lady Isabella Wentworth, whose decision to remain in widow’s weeds until she died embodied a selfdefinition that focused above all on her status as a widow. Informing her son that she had refused an invitation to visit her relatives, she wrote, “I shall be much better pleesed, in your sweet wilderness [his estate at Twickenham], thincking of your charming self, then to be with soe much company, & drest up in print every day, I Lyke my Norridg Crape better, & my sweet solletude.”111 Mary Delany clearly expected that living a more retired life in her mid-forties would win her respect. “In the spring and summer of life we flutter and bask in the sunshine of diversions,” she wrote to her sister in 1746, 108

Lady Hertford to Louisa, Countess of Pomfret, Richkings, 5 June 1741 O.S., in Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, p. 148; see also Lady Hertford to Henrietta Knight, Marlborough, 1 November 1726, in Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, p. 128. 109 Lady Hertford to Lord Beaufort, London, 25 January 1743, in Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, p. 238. 110 See, e.g., Spectator 91 (14 June 1711), 1: 384–5. 111 Lady Wentworth to Lord Raby, 18 July [1707], BL Add. MS 22225, fol. 20r–20v. Norwich crepe was the standard fabric for deep mourning. 159

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but “in the autumn and in the winter of life we by degrees seek for shade and shelter, and if we have made a good and prudent gathering of fruit and harvest, we may then have the full enjoyment of them, as long as the great Author and Giver thinks fit.”112 Graceful acceptance of aging, like deliberate withdrawal from cosmopolitan society, could be used to stake out a positive image once other methods were no longer available. Yet the exact boundaries of youth and age were ill-defined. In 1716 Countess Cowper complained bitterly when she was not sent tickets to a masquerade, thinking that perhaps the giver considered her “so old, that it was impossible I should go.” She was then about thirty, and clearly believed that she was still entitled to participate in fashionable leisure.113 Another woman distinguished between a ridotto – for which she admitted she was “a little too old” – and “all other public places.”114 In 1749, Lady Jane Coke wrote that she knew of no fashion but one: One thing is new, which is, there is not such a thing as a decent old woman left, everybody curls their hair, shews their neck, and wears pink, but your humble servant. People who have covered their heads for forty years now leave off their caps and think it becomes them, in short we try to out-do our patterns, the French, in every ridiculous vanity.115

Such comments were clearly hyperbolic; Lady Jane was drawing on the trope of the foolishly vain old woman in order to portray herself in a positive light. But given the importance of women’s fashionable activities for themselves and their families, graceful retirement must have been a difficult choice for many.

Conclusion The identification of women with consumerism and fashion was a powerful one in the early eighteenth century. Through this identification, conduct writers and other social commentators used a critique of fashionable luxury to attack women who exercised financial or social power in the public arena. Yet 112 Mary Delany to Ann Dewes, Delville, 11 January 1745/6, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 2: 411. See also Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Lady Mar, October 1727, in Halsband, ed., Complete Letters, 2: 86; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Lady Bute, 3 May 1758, in Halsband, ed., Complete Letters, 3: 144. 113 Lady Cowper, diary entry, 3 February 1715/16, HRO D/EP F205. Ribeiro suggests that thirty was the age generally recognized as the time when one should abandon “the frivolities of fashion” (Dress, p. 118). 114 Ann Granville to Mrs. Granville, 8 March 1737, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 1: 595. 115 Lady Jane Coke to Mary Eyre, Saville Row, 31 January 1754, in Rathborne, ed., Letters from Lady Jane Coke, pp. 134–5.

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such a strident condemnation should perhaps prompt us to reconsider the behavior of these fashionable women. In many instances, women of quality did indulge in lavish expenditure. Consumption was not, however, solely about the conspicuous display of wasteful extravagance, even at the highest levels of English society. Aristocratic women constantly made decisions about appropriate levels of display and fashionability in all areas from dress to food, decisions that reflected their awareness of the broad implications of their choices. As Veblen argued many years ago, patterns of consumption could be used to assert status within elite society. But instead of being passive vessels for the display of their husbands’ wealth, women of quality actively used fashion and consumer goods in a wide network of familial and social connections. Far from ignoring the ideas of social critics, these women could adapt such language to their own purposes. The rhetoric of trivial, even immoral, luxury and idleness remained a powerful tool with which such women emphasized and justified their own moderation; rejecting fashionable excesses could be as important a means of asserting status as wearing the latest fashions. Meanwhile, changing aesthetic and cultural norms created a set of values emphasizing sentimental sincerity and idealizing rural simplicity. This antifashionable fashion embodied the contradictory nature of many aristocratic women’s attitudes towards consumption. It remained a contested area, in which women asserted and interpreted rank, character, and morality. As women of quality adopted – and adapted – the rhetoric of the social critics, it underwent a transformation. The apparently trivial became important; personal choices became public statements.

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6

Politeness and Sociability Just as consumption and fashion were seen as areas of particular feminine concern and expertise, so were the rituals of politeness and sociability that dominated much of elite life. Like fashion, sociability was both trivialized and seen as morally suspect. Didactic writers fretted over the wasted time supposedly represented by fashionable women’s constant round of visiting, dining, and conversation. For them, female participation in such activities and the supposed uselessness of this behavior were mutually defining and reinforcing. The behavior was trivial and idle because it was feminine; it was feminine because it was trivial and idle. Yet many women of quality, even while they frequently drew on such discourse and joined in censuring fashionable idleness, also took politeness and sociability intensely seriously. The key to understanding this apparent contradiction lies in the role that sociability played in an elite culture that still relied greatly on polite rituals even as it increasingly applauded informality, openness, and sincerity. Sociability held enormous public implications and could transmit information about status or relationships of kinship and patronage – precisely because it was ostensibly unimportant. Scholars widely recognize the significance of politeness in the eighteenth century; the term itself dominates histories of the period as it does those of no other. The concept of politeness has been seen as so important that Paul Langford gave his survey of the period the title A Polite and Commercial People.1 Lawrence Klein has devoted a full-length study to the philosophy of the third Earl of Shaftesbury, a philosophy that explicitly connected politeness and liberty to create a new Whig ideology.2 Most recently, Philip Carter has studied eighteenth-century debates over politeness as an alternative to older forms of masculine identity.3 The importance of politeness has similarly been recognized by literary scholars, who have focused on, for 1

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Lawrence E. Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). See also Lawrence E. Klein, “Liberty, Manners, and Politeness in Early EighteenthCentury England,” Historical Journal 32 (1989): 583–605; Lawrence E. Klein, “Property and Politeness in the Early Eighteenth-Century Whig Moralists: The Case of the Spectator,” in Early Modern Conceptions of Property, ed. John Brewer and Susan Staves (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 221–33. 3 Philip Carter, Men and the Emergence of Polite Society, Britain 1660–1800 (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2001). 2

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instance, the eighteenth-century polite letter.4 A large body of work also exists on didactic literature dealing with politeness.5 Much less research has been done, however, on the day-to-day functioning of politeness in society, on the actual practices of social interaction. As with membership in the Quality, what counted as polite society was a question of considerable debate in eighteenth-century England. The Earl of Chesterfield’s attempt to define “good company” demonstrates the difficulty. It was, he concluded vaguely, “that company which all the people of the place call and acknowledge to be good company, notwithstanding some objections which they may form to some of the individuals who compose it. It consists chiefly (but by no means without exception) of people of considerable birth, rank, and character.”6 Modern scholars are equally divided on the question of just what politeness meant to early modern English society. Langford emphasizes its use by the “commercial middle class” to challenge the dominance of the landed elite. For him, eighteenth-century politeness was above all a set of external accomplishments and activities, despite the rhetoric of politeness as “je ne sais quoi,” an ineffable quality of gentlemanliness.7 Lawrence Klein and Michael Curtin, however, argue that politeness appealed primarily to

4

See, e.g., James Daybell, ed., Early Modern Women’s Letter Writing, 1450–1700 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), especially the introduction and essays by Susan Whyman and Anne Laurence; Susan Whyman, “‘Paper Visits’: The Post-Restoration Letter as Seen Through the Verney Family Archive,” in Epistolary Selves: Letters and Letter-Writers, 1600–1945, ed. R. Earle (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), pp. 15–36; Bruce Redford, The Converse of the Pen: Acts of Intimacy in the Eighteenth-Century Familiar Letter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986); Ruth Perry, Women, Letters, and the Novel (New York: AMS Press, 1980); Howard Anderson, Irvin Ehrenpreis, and Philip Daghlian, The Familiar Letter in the Eighteenth Century (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1966); Jean Robertson, The Art of Letter Writing: An Essay on the Handbooks Published in England during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London: University Press of Liverpool, 1942). 5 In addition to Carter, Emergence of Polite Society, see Jorge Arditi, A Genealogy of Manners: Transformations of Social Relations in France and England from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); F. A. Childs, “Prescriptions for Manners in English Courtesy Literature, 1690–1760, and Their Social Implications” (Ph.D. diss., Oxford, 1984); Michael Curtin, “A Question of Manners: Status and Gender in Etiquette and Courtesy,” Journal of Modern History 57 (1985): 395–423; John E. Mason, Gentlefolk in the Making: Studies in the History of English Courtesy Literature and Related Topics from 1531 to 1774 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1935). On the American literature, see C. Dallett Hemphill, Bowing to Necessities: A History of Manners in America, 1620–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992). 6 Letters to his Son Philip Stanhope, together with Several other Pieces on Various Subjects, published by Mrs. Eugenia Stanhope, 2 vols. (London: J. Dodsley, 1774), 1: 348, quoted in Georges Lamoine, “Lord Chesterfield’s Letters as Conduct-Books,” in The Crisis of Courtesy, ed. J. Carré (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994), p. 113. 7 Langford, Polite and Commercial People, pp. 4–5 and ch. 3, especially p. 71. 163

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“a political class that was aristocratic (in the broad sense)” and based in “fashionable London.”8 Focusing on the debates over politeness rather than seeing it as a unified, identifiable concept, Philip Carter eschews attempts to attach it to a single class. Instead, he argues that “polite society can be said to consist broadly . . . of those who sought a reputation for refinement,” however they chose to define that refinement.9 All three recognize that contemporaries viewed politeness as, ideally, a combination of manners and morals, usefully drawing attention to the continued importance of the idea of politeness as an external manifestation of inward character.10 The connection between manners and morals provided the philosophical basis for the elite’s intense interest in polite education and for the widespread assumption that politeness held a significance far beyond mere outward form. At the same time, however, this concept was being undermined during the eighteenth century as politeness was coming to be seen as merely the mastery of certain learned behaviors. It thus became associated with hypocrisy and social climbing, and this led to a reaction in the form of a new polite convention insisting, ironically, on sincerity, informality, and sentiment.11 Such studies of politeness have largely been conceived (explicitly or implicitly) in terms of male sociability and a masculine ideal of the “gentleman.”12 Curtin goes so far as to argue that women were excluded from the eighteenth-century ideal of politeness: “[Eighteenth-century] courtesy

8 Curtin, “Question of Manners,” pp. 399–400; Klein, Shaftesbury, p. 150; Klein, “Liberty, Manners, and Politeness,” pp. 584–9; Childs, “Prescriptions for Manners,” p. 94. But see Lawrence E. Klein, “Politeness for Plebes: Consumption and Social Identity in Early Eighteenth-Century England,” in The Consumption of Culture 1600–1800, ed. Ann Bermingham and John Brewer (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 362–82, on the marketing of politeness to middling classes. 9 Carter, Emergence of Polite Society, ch. 1; quotation p. 19. 10 Curtin, “Question of Manners,” pp. 395–6, 402–3; Klein, “Liberty, Manners, and Politeness,” p. 590; Klein, Shaftesbury, p. 7. 11 See Childs, “Prescriptions for Manners,” pp. 123–8, for a distinction between the older idea of “good breeding,” as indicative of inward morality, slowly replaced during the eighteenth century by “politeness,” a more superficial concept. On the rise of sentiment as an alternative form of politeness, see Carter, Emergence of Polite Society, ch. 3. 12 Carter, Emergence of Polite Society, discusses the importance of interactions with women to the eighteenth-century polite gentleman but deals explicitly with men. Klein’s work focuses exclusively on the concept of the gentleman and never mentions ladies. Fenela Childs describes the standard ideal of courtesy literature as that of the “gentleman,” and deals with ladies in a single separate chapter: see especially pp. 143–4. Felicity Heal and Clive Holmes share the same assumption; their chapter on “Civility, Sociability and the Maintenance of Hegemony” includes subheadings on “The Gentleman Alone,” “The Gentleman in his Household,” “The Gentleman in Company,” and “The Gentleman Abroad”: The Gentry in England and Wales, 1500–1700 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), ch. 8. Similarly, Philip Jenkins’s study of the Glamorgan gentry contains a chapter on “The Idea of a Gentleman” but none on ladies: The Making of a Ruling Class: The Glamorgan Gentry 1640–1790 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

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literature was an almost entirely masculine genre for the simple reason that its task was to instruct readers how to get on ‘in the world,’ a sphere in which ladies did not often move.”13 While it is indeed true that didactic literature for women differed from that intended for men, it is, however, a very different thing to argue from this literature that women were absent from the realm of polite interaction. On the contrary, the stridency with which didactic authors for women condemned all forms of female sociability suggests that they were responding to women’s widespread participation in such activities. Moreover, attention to the daily workings of politeness, rather than only the philosophy of politeness expounded in theoretical treatises or formal education, reveals that women were in fact central to the activities that formed the basis of elite identity.14 Thus when Lady Mary Pierrepont wanted to criticize the boorish country men of Wiltshire, she complained that they refused to allow “the poor female part of their family” the use of a coach. Their lives consumed by hunting and drinking, they ignored the importance of polite visiting to the lives of women.15 Recognizing the centrality of such polite sociability in the lives of aristocratic women avoids trivializing such activities as idle timewasting in otherwise empty, leisured lives. Instead, this approach highlights the significance of such behavior to the Quality’s fashioning of its role in society. Before going into detail, it is necessary to provide some working definitions of politeness and sociability. By “politeness,” I refer to the specific rules and conventions of social interaction, the outward forms governing behavior. In theory, this behavior was supposed to reflect inner character, although the eighteenth century saw much anxiety over the possibility for polite behavior to conceal moral corruption. Politeness incorporates the notion of complaisance – of making one’s associates feel at ease – but it also includes more specific rules, such as when and how to sit or stand, the kinds of words that are acceptable to use in particular situations, and the range of behavior that comes under the rubric of good manners. Letter-writing was itself a polite act, for instance, with a set of conventions governing the letter’s form as well as its content. The specific forms of politeness could and did change over time – notably, as we will see, in the adoption of a polite convention that insisted on its own lack of polite conventions. By “sociability,” on the other hand, I mean the practices to which the rules of politeness applied. Sociability

13

Curtin, “Question of Manners,” p. 418. Carter, Emergence of Polite Society, ch. 5; Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), ch. 6; Susan E. Whyman, Sociability and Power in Late-Stuart England: The Cultural Worlds of the Verneys 1660–1720 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), ch. 4. 15 Lady Mary Pierrepont to Frances Hewet, c. 2 August 1710, in Robert Halsband, ed., The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965–7), 1: 49–50. Amanda Vickery, Gentleman’s Daughter, ch. 6, discusses similar conflicts between the sexes over sociability. 14

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includes the many kinds of social interaction, such as visiting, dining, and other gatherings in which individuals demonstrated their status by being polite. Politeness also determined when different types of sociability were appropriate, although the specifics of politeness, like other rules, were not always strictly defined and could be contested. Sociability and politeness were thus inextricably intertwined even though they were not identical. While politeness implied a formal mastery that was learned by men as well as women, sociability involved a range of activities that were particularly, though by no means exclusively, associated with women. And women were particularly important in the educational processes that enabled children of both sexes to learn politeness. Attention to female sociability highlights the fluid meanings of public and private in the early eighteenth century. Activities such as visiting, dining, and attending assemblies were private in the sense of being explicitly social rather than political, but they were also recognized as having implications in the larger, public world. Eighteenth-century people often referred to such gatherings as being “public”; they did so especially when referring to the desirability of keeping information “private” – that is, from being known outside a specific group such as a letter-writer and recipient, or a family.16 This chapter will argue that it was precisely the acceptance of a distinction between public and private, and the gendering of those spheres, that made women’s participation in the ostensibly private activities of sociability such an important part of life among the Quality. As they were constantly reminded, women’s choices in sociable behavior held significant ramifications for their personal reputations. Yet despite the best efforts of the conduct writers, these personal interactions could be, and often were, read in highly politicized terms.17 Every time they attended an assembly, or visited the court, or wrote a letter, women were engaging with political as well as personal matters. How did they balance the demands of a society that expected, 16

On the meanings of public and private in early modern England, see John Brewer, “This, That and the Other: Public, Social and Private in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Shifting the Boundaries: Transformation of the Languages of Public and Private in the Eighteenth Century, ed. D. Castiglione and L. Sharpe (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1995), pp. 1–21; Linda A. Pollock, “Living on the Stage of the World: The Concept of Privacy Among the Elite of Early Modern England,” in Rethinking Social History: English Society 1570–1920 and Its Interpretation, ed. Adrian Wilson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), pp. 78–96. 17 On the political implications of elite female sociability in the late eighteenth century, see Elaine Chalus, “Elite Women, Social Politics, and the Political World of Late Eighteenth-Century England,” Historical Journal 43 (2000): 669–97; Elaine Chalus, “‘That Epidemical Madness’: Women and Electoral Politics in the Late Eighteenth Century,” in Gender in Eighteenth-Century England: Roles, Representations and Responsibilities, ed. H. Barker and E. Chalus (New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 1997), pp. 151–78. For the nineteenth century, see K. D. Reynolds, Aristocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). 166

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even required, them to participate in an almost endless round of diversions, while simultaneously condemning the women who did so? How did they acknowledge the public implications of behavior that was supposed to be private?

A polite education When Mary Delany’s niece, Mary Dewes, was about ten years old, Mrs. Delany began to worry about the girl’s education. But the education that concerned her was not only the child’s formal learning; even more important, it seems, were the informal lessons in politeness that she feared her niece was not receiving. In a series of letters to her sister, Mrs. Delany pressed for young Mary to have the chance to learn these important lessons. In 1753, she wrote that she hoped the girl would soon go to Bath or London, where she could meet “variety of good company, which is of more use in forming a gracious manner from the age of seven to fourteen than seven years afterwards!”18 Mrs. Delany found it difficult to leave off such an important subject. She urged her sister to take little Mary to the Delanys’ house in London, where she could both learn from a good dancing master and be introduced to the right people. Mary’s parents were certainly giving her an education in all that really mattered for her spiritual welfare, Mrs. Delany conceded, but this was not enough. There is a grace and a manner which cannot be attained without conversing with a variety of well-bred people, which when well chosen cannot efface what is certainly more necessary, but will give a polish, and by an agreeable recommendation render all the good part more useful and acceptable to those she converses with.19

But Mrs. Delany’s letters also reveal the difficult path that mothers had to tread in educating their children. In an earlier letter about little Mary, she had insisted: I cannot think it necessary to the accomplishment of a young lady that she should be early and frequently produced in public, and I should rather see a little awkward bashfulness, than a daring and forward genteelness! Good company and good conversation I should wish to have my niece introduced into as soon as she can speak and understand, but for all public places till after fifteen (except a play or oratorio) she should not know what they are, and then very rarely, and only with 18

Mary Delany to Ann Dewes, Delville, 7 April 1754, in Lady Llanover, ed., The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany: With Interesting Reminiscences of King George the Third and Queen Charlotte, 1st ser., 3 vols. (London: Richard Bentley, 1861–2), 3: 219. The editor states that the correct year is actually 1753. 19 Mary Delany to Ann Dewes, Delville, 27 January 1759, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 3: 536–7. 167

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her mother or aunt. . . . I think all public water-drinking places more pernicious than a masquerade, and that I have not a very good opinion of.20

Bath could introduce a girl to fashionable company, but it was fraught with risks. Women of quality had to tread a fine line between teaching their daughters the necessary social skills and making them too publicly visible. Historians often stress the differences in the education of early modern girls and boys, and echo the dismissive attitudes of didactic authors toward a female education that focused on “the accomplishments” rather than on serious scholarship. But in the informal, yet essential, lessons of sociability, elite boys and girls frequently shared the same educational process. While scholars recognize the importance of mothers in early training, the continued role of women in this informal education as children grew up has generally been underestimated.21 Of course women were excluded from the Grand Tour, the experiential education so important to young men of the aristocracy.22 Yet as the arbiters of the rules of sociability and politeness among the elite, women played a powerful role.23 It should perhaps not be surprising, then, that aristocratic women were acutely aware of the importance of “good breeding,” and spent much time and energy trying to ensure an adequate social education for their children.24 Thus Lady Strafford noted with pride that one night at court the French Ambassadress had praised her son’s “Politeness” for giving up 20

Mary Delany to Ann Dewes, Delville, 22 February 1752, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 3: 91–2. 21 See Heal and Holmes, Gentry, ch. 7; Rosemary O’Day, Education and Society 1500–1800 (London: Longman, 1982); Randolph Trumbach, The Rise of the Egalitarian Family: Aristocratic Kinship and Domestic Relations in Eighteenth-Century England (New York: Academic Press, 1978), pp. 249–80; Ralph Houlbrooke, The English Family, 1450–1700 (London: Longman, 1974), pp. 146–53, 171–8; Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, trans. Robert Baldick (New York: Knopf, 1962), Part II. On gender distinctions in the education of girls and boys, see Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England 1500–1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), chs. 15, 18. On changing views of women’s education, see Alice Browne, The Eighteenth Century Feminist Mind (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987), ch. 5. For the specific educational programs of some early modern families, see Alice T. Friedman, House and Household in Elizabethan England: Wollaton Hall and the Willoughby Family (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 17–20; Vivienne Larminie, Wealth, Kinship and Culture: The Seventeenth-Century Newdigates of Arbury and Their World (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Royal Historical Society/Boydell Press, 1995), ch. 8. 22 James M. Rosenheim, The Emergence of a Ruling Order: English Landed Society 1650–1750 (London: Longman, 1998), pp. 34–5, 42–5. 23 Whyman, Sociability and Power, ch. 4. 24 Dieter A. Berger, “Maxims of Conduct Into Literature: Jonathan Swift and Polite Conversation,” in Carré, ed., The Crisis of Courtesy, p. 83; Childs, “Prescriptions for Manners,” pp. 102–28; George C. Brauer, Jr., The Education of a Gentleman: Theories of Gentlemanly Education in England, 1660–1775 (New York: Bookman Associates, 1959), pp. 134–40. “Good breeding” was virtually synonymous with “politeness” during the early years of the eighteenth century, and it nicely embodies the way in which learned behavior and birth were seen as mutually reinforcing. 168

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his place to her.25 The Countess of Portland, on the other hand, was outraged when she found out that her grandsons had failed to pay their respects to the Princess Royal. Learning such formalities was a fundamental part of “a man of qualities education,” she insisted; her grandsons “must have a great politeness, which will gain them esteem.”26 Acquiring politeness while still young was essential, so that as an adult one could interact in the Quality with ease, demonstrating the naturalness that was thought to reveal good breeding. Behaving naturally in polite society showed that one deserved a place in that society, but it took many years to learn this “natural” behavior.27 The skills taught in formal polite education, such as dancing, were the outward representations of the aesthetic sensibility and self-control valued as the bases of polite behavior, and many aristocratic women took great care to ensure that their children learned these skills.28 Dancing was essential since it revealed gracefulness and deportment – hence, dancing masters also taught the details of bowing, curtseying, and proper posture. In 1695 Viscount Hatton’s eldest daughter helped him to find a dancing master for her halfsiblings; it cost £3 a month for instructions that would include helping the smallest boy learn “to walk and make a legg.”29 The Countess of Strafford paid slightly more – three guineas a month – for a dancing master to teach her three youngest children.30 She kept careful track of all her children’s dancing partners, including her son’s, and reported the details of balls to her husband. In 1734, for example, she came back well satisfied from court after the Prince Royal had offered to find a partner for her daughter Lucy and had expressed his enjoyment of the entire family’s company.31 Lady Strafford was proud of Lucy’s dancing abilities but worried about another daughter, Harriot, “for she Pokes sadly & I tell her of it perpeatually.”32 Skill in dancing 25

Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 2 January 1738/9, BL Add. MS 31145, fol. 314. 26 Countess of Portland to William, Count Bentinck, Whitehall, 3 July 1750, BL Eg. MS 1716, fol. 215r–215v. 27 Fenela Childs writes, “there should be such naturalness that there was a total concordance between outward expressions of civility and the inner self,” though this was possible only through “a very high degree of art”: “Prescriptions for Manners,” p. 109. As Lawrence Klein comments, politeness “was described as a zone of freedom, ease, and naturalness (though these terms assumed highly qualified meanings in so obviously artificial an activity)”: Shaftesbury, p. 4. 28 On the importance of self-control to polite behavior, see Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination, pp. 332–3. 29 Countess of Nottingham to Lord Hatton, 21 March [1695], BL Add. MS 29596, fol. 152. 30 Receipts for payments to W. Boval, 21 April 1731 and 9 June 1731, BL Add. MS 22258, fols. 195, 210. 31 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 8 January 1733/4, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 419. 32 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 10 January 1733/4, BL Add. MS 31145, fol. 86r–86v. 169

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mattered because it revealed gentility as well as coordination; Lady Hervey complimented the Duke of Grafton’s daughter as “the agreeablest dancer, the genteelest and the prettiest Creature that ever lived.”33 Dancing also introduced children to the arenas of sociability in which they would encounter other members of the Quality, including potential spouses.34 The lessons began early in life. In 1751, Mary Delany organized a “tiny ball” in the afternoon for fourteen people between the ages of eight and twenty-one.35 Occasions like this one, which mirrored all the rituals of dancing and dining common to balls for adults, enabled children to practice their skills in both dancing and politeness before trying them in the larger world where the stakes were higher. Even more important than such formal skills, however, were the less tangible lessons that were acquired through association with people of quality. As Lady Mary Wortley Montagu remarked about assemblies, sociability created “a more enlarg’d way of thinking” through “a kind of public Education.”36 Because women were especially important in this training, they continued to play a major role in this aspect of children’s education well after the very early years with which their influence is usually associated. Frances Boscawen’s journal for 1763 repeatedly recorded taking her daughters visiting, to balls, and to court, and she noted when they were presented to the Queen, or the occasions on which they danced.37 Another woman saw a double value in her daughter’s visit to Bath: she “improves almost as much as she diverts herself here,” wrote the proud mother, adding (perhaps a bit optimistically), “I hope seeing so much of what is called entertainment now will make her less eager for public places when she is first married.”38 In the 1730s, the Countess of Strafford’s letters as well as her children’s described them engaging in a wide array of sociable activities. Lady 33 Lady Mary Hervey to Countess of Suffolk, 30 September 1732, BL Add. MS 22628, fol. 32r. 34 Larminie, Wealth, Kinship and Culture, p. 120; Aileen Ribeiro, Dress in EighteenthCentury Europe, 1715–1789 (London: B. T. Batsford Ltd., 1984), pp. 120–1. On the details of what the dancing-master taught, see Trevor Fawcett, “Dance and Teachers of Dance in Eighteenth-Century Bath,” Bath History 2 (1988): 27–48; Joan Wildeblood and Peter Brinson, The Polite World: A Guide to English Manners and Deportment from the Thirteenth to the Nineteenth Century (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 191–2, 212–13, 219–27, 232–6. 35 Mary Delany to Ann Dewes, Delville, 30 March 1751, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 3: 31–2. 36 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Countess of Bute, 19 May 1756, in Halsband, ed., Complete Letters, 3: 106. 37 See, e.g., Frances Boscawen, journal entry, 23–4 February 1763, Bodleian MS Eng.misc.fol.71, fol. 13v; Frances Boscawen, journal entries, 23 and 26 August 1763, Bodleian MS Eng.misc.fol.71, fol. 39v. 38 Mrs. S. Strangways Horner to Charlotte Clayton, Bath, 15 December [n.y.], in Mrs. Thomson, ed., Memoirs of Viscountess Sundon, Mistress of the Robes to Queen Caroline, Consort of George II.; Including Letters from the Most Celebrated Persons of Her Time, 2 vols. (London: Henry Colburn, 1847), 2: 354.

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Strafford was pleased that her son’s “acquantance increases & mulltiplys Extremly,” which she clearly saw as important to his position as only son and heir to the earldom.39 When her daughters grew older, she became more careful of their acquaintances. In 1736 she was happy to have her son attend as many dances as possible, but her sixteen-year-old daughter Harriot was “to bigg now to [go]e amoung a heap of boys where I dont viset.”40 Even within this gendered framework, however, she remained in charge of all her children’s sociable activities. The family frequently wrote about visiting, dining out, and trips to court, theater, and opera. In one sense this was, of course, simply passing on news of the day’s activities. But it was more significant as well. Such correspondence communicated the children’s successful assimilation into the Quality. Mothers were not the only women involved in this sociable education; a wide network of women, both kin and friends, could help in the good breeding of children. Lady Frances Hastings was concerned that her niece and nephew were picking up bad habits from the broad Yorkshire accent and dialect of one of their servants, so when her niece offered to cut her “a bonny flower,” Lady Frances took care to reprove the child for her uncouth language.41 Elizabeth Montagu similarly worried about Lord Lyttelton’s thirteen-year-old daughter, who had not mastered polite behavior. “There is a great deal of good in her, but her virtues are in deshabille, her understanding totally undressed,” she wrote, adding, “she does not know how much the amiableness of a woman depends on trivial things. I talked very seriously to her on the consequences of neglecting the ordinary accomplishments of people of her rank.”42 When the Duchess of Buckingham was too ill to go with her son to court, she wrote to Charlotte Clayton asking her to look out for him. “If you happen to be near him, and should see him not behave himself well,” she asked, “be so good to him and me, as to whisper him to come home, which will be a little mortification, and consequently a correction.”43 Lady Isabella Wentworth’s letters to her son, Lord Strafford, were filled with similar concerns about her youngest daughter, Betty, who suffered from a lack of good breeding that Lady Wentworth feared would prevent her from ever finding a husband. Because she lived a fairly retired life, she turned for help 39 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 29 May 1735, BL Add. MS 31145, fol. 96v. 40 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 6 January 1735/6, BL Add. MS 31145, fols. 126v–127r. 41 [Lady Frances] Hastings to Lady Anne Hastings, Otterden Place, 17 June 1730, in George Hastings Wheler, ed., Hastings Wheler Family Letters [Part 2], 1704–1739 (Wakefield: West Yorkshire Printing Co. (privately printed), 1935), pp. 96–7. 42 Elizabeth Montagu to Charles Lyttelton, 1758, in Maud Wyndham, Chronicles of the Eighteenth Century: Founded on the Correspondence of Sir Thomas Lyttelton and his Family, 2 vols. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1924), 2: 288. 43 Duchess of Buckingham to Charlotte Clayton, 1 March 1726/27, in Thomson, ed., Sundon Memoirs, 1: 140.

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first to her niece and then, after Strafford’s marriage, to her daughter-in-law in hopes that their positive influences would rub off on Betty.44 Apparently a slow learner, Betty continue to receive such lessons long after she reached adulthood, and Lady Strafford frequently discussed her attempts to introduce her sister-in-law to good society. Attending court in 1712, she brought Betty (who was then about thirty) with her, “for I think there is nothing will improve her so much as keeping the Best Company.”45 Families also relied on kin and friends when they sent their children to the metropolis for what one woman called “all the Diversions & Advantages of being in London.”46 The Hattons, based in Guernsey, sent their daughter to stay in London with her married half-sister, the Countess of Nottingham.47 In one letter to her father, Alice Elizabeth Hatton remarked that she had little time to write to him because of “going a viseting so Lat which is the custom in this place & if I did not do it; it would be the Sam thing for company would com to us.”48 Her letter, intended as an excuse for not writing more, revealed the time taken up by sociable activities, an idea confirmed by her other letters from the trip. She described visits to court, balls, and a trip to see a beached whale (apparently a popular attraction that season). Her letters contained the names of a wide variety of women, including Lady Longueville, Lady Scarborough, and Lady Suffolk, who took her out and provided entertainment for her on different occasions. Such documents show Alice Elizabeth taking part in a network of sociability that introduced her to both the people and the activities that would be an essential part of her adult life. The practice of letter-writing itself was another important aspect of polite education. Just as the prevalence of letter-writing manuals suggests the emphasis placed on the familiar letter in eighteenth-century society, so the form and content of children’s letters reveal their parents’ and teachers’ assumptions about polite correspondence. Most scholarship on the eighteenth44

Lady Wentworth to Lord Raby, 1 November [?1705–1707], BL Add. MS 31144, fols. 168–9; same to same, 7 December [1705], BL Add. MS 31143, fol. 111v; same to same, 4 November [1707], BL Add. MS 22225, fols. 52–3; same to same, 4 December [1711], BL Add. MS 22225, fol. 116; same to same, 29 April [1712], BL Add. MS 22225, fol. 133; same to same, [12 January 1712/13], BL Add. MS 22225, fols. 343–4. 45 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 21 March 1712, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 107v. Information on Betty’s age comes from John Wentworth, The Wentworth Genealogy: English and American, vol. 1 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1878), p. 21, who says she was born in 1682, but this source may not be entirely reliable and it is possible that Betty was younger than that. Certainly she was treated as a child well into the 1710s. 46 Abigail Harley to Edward, Lord Harley, Aywood, 11 August 1723, BL Add. MS 70379, fol. 10r. On similar patterns in the early seventeenth century, see Larminie, Wealth, Kinship and Culture, pp. 122–3. 47 Lady Elizabeth Hatton to Christopher, Visount Hatton, [c. 1699], BL Add. MS 29576, fol. 396. 48 Alice Elizabeth Hatton to Lord Hatton, 25 February 1698/9, BL Add. MS 29575, fol. 280r. 172

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century letter has emphasized the value placed on spontaneity, informality, and intimacy.49 Too great attention to such issues, however, tends to underestimate the importance of formal (in the stylistic sense) conventions governing letters even among family members. The familiar letter was the polite letter, and it demanded extensive training in mechanics, style, and content. Thus the Countess of Nottingham noted in 1695 that she had forbidden her daughter to write any more letters until she renewed her handwriting lessons, lest she “settle into a scralling way.”50 In a world in which social interaction was carried on as much through polite correspondence as through face-to-face encounters, good penmanship was one way of demonstrating good breeding. Similarly, when Lady Mary Wortley Montagu asked for a letter from her granddaughter in 1752, she framed the request in terms of the need to train the girl in the proper forms of correspondence.51 The Hatton and Strafford family papers are particularly useful for the many letters they contain from children and young adults.52 Even the youngest children’s letters include the forms of deference, respect, and polite inquiries after their recipients’ health that were the hallmark of the polite letter among all elite correspondents. Seeing letter-writing as education also helps account for the “adult” tone of this correspondence. The letters frequently reflect an adult sensibility, mirroring the language and values of adult polite society. This is not to say that early modern society was unable to grasp the concept of childhood;53 rather, it shows that letter-writing itself was a part of the ongoing education in politeness. Thus Alice Elizabeth Hatton, writing to her father in 1699, reported that at a recent ball at St. James’s the best dancer was one Mistress Roper: “Indeed she did it very well but had too much Indeavourd to Imitat Lady Hartingtons nodin her head which Is only becomeing to her Self. . . . My Lord Antrim has Cut of his hear & got one of the new fassiond Perewks which have so much heir In them that a good one cant cost Les then 60 pound,” she went on, “& that monstros bignes with his Lettle face did not Look so well.”54 Her comments on the quality of the dancing and the cost and 49

See the works cited above, note 4. Anne, Countess of Nottingham, to Lord Hatton, 28 February [1695], BL Add. MS 29596, fol. 148r. It is notable that during the early eighteenth century (in marked contrast to the late seventeenth century) the handwriting of elite women became as good or better than that of men. Susan Whyman makes a similar argument: Susan Whyman, “Gentle Companions: Single Women and Their Letters in Late Stuart England,” in Daybell, ed., Early Modern Women’s Letter Writing, p. 179. 51 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Lady Bute, September 1752, in Halsband, ed., Complete Letters, 3: 17–18. 52 Hatton-Finch Papers, BL Add. MS 29575, 29576; Wentworth Papers, BL Add. MS 31145. 53 Cf. Ariès, Centuries of Childhood. 54 Alice Elizabeth Hatton to Lord Hatton, [September 1699], BL Add. MS 29575, fol. 351r–351v. See also, e.g., same to same, [September 1699], BL Add. MS 29575, fol. 323. Alice Elizabeth’s exact date of birth is unclear. She was one of several children, and her mother died in 1684, so she was probably in her mid-teens. 50

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fashionability of the wig seem to be repeating the conversation of adults she had heard. In doing so she was not being precocious, however; she was revealing an education in polite society. The letters of Lord and Lady Strafford’s children during the 1730s use a similar tone and also appear to reflect adult conversation, an impression that is reinforced by the children’s tendency to use almost identical language in describing activities they participated in together. When the eldest daughter, Anne, attended a ridotto in 1732, she wrote to Lady Huntingdon that it was “a very agreable one, for thier [sic] was all the good company in town.”55 Five years later, her sister Lucy, in her early teens, reported her attendance at “a very Gentle pritty dinner,” and gossiped about a married couple’s adulterous liaisons.56 Harriot (aged eighteen) described a new farce, saying that “the words you will easily imagine are not very fine the supject [sic] could not alow of that but the musick is realy very pritty but in a redicule to the operas.” Her younger brother on the same day wrote using almost the same language (and perhaps revealed the source of their opinions): “the musick is excesive pretty, & tho’ it is a Burlesque on the opera’s yet Mr Handel owns he thinks the tunes very well compos’d.”57 Lady Strafford, who often enclosed their letters in her own, obviously approved of their content and style. The significance of such correspondence lies not only in what it reveals about children’s participation in fashionable activities, but in the way it shows them being taught about the importance of polite correspondence. Writing to their fathers provided both Alice Elizabeth Hatton and the Strafford children with an opportunity to practice polite communication. Aristocratic women thus often played a significant role in the education of children not only during their infancy but also, and perhaps more importantly, during their introduction into elite society in their teens. These women ensured that their children – and those of their relatives and friends – received the necessary training in the accomplishments that distinguished the members of the elite. They also introduced children to the Quality and continued to monitor their behavior to ensure that they had mastered the rituals of polite interaction.

55

Lady Anne Wentworth to Countess of Huntingdon, London, 13 March 1731[/2], Historical Manuscripts Commission (HMC) Hastings III, p. 12. Anne was nineteen and was married a year later. 56 Lady Lucy Wentworth to Lord Strafford, London, 29 December [1737], BL Add. MS 31145, fol. 188r–188v. 57 Lady Harriot Wentworth to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 14 January 1737/8, BL Add. MS 31145, fol. 228r–228v; Lord William Wentworth to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 14 January 1737/8, BL Add. MS 31145, fol. 226r. 174

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Sociability and reputation Clearly, many women believed that it was important for their children to learn the conventions of polite sociability. As we will see in the next section, sociable interactions were terribly important in the elite competition for social status and political power. Yet women’s participation in sociability and their mastery of polite forms also had direct implications for their personal reputations. Choices about one’s friends and companions, patterns of speech and gesture, and letter-writing itself, were all fraught with significance. Didactic writers recognized this fact even as they condemned female sociability – hence their efforts to dictate the conditions of sociable interactions. As they insisted over and over again, women’s friendships and appearances in public were believed to reveal insights into their moral character. But if these commentators insisted on a black-and-white world of good and evil choices, women of quality faced a more complex situation. Elizabeth Montagu put her finger on the problem when she criticized an acquaintance for lacking the complaisance that was so important to female social success. “Mrs. B—— is a very good woman, and has excellent sense and wit; but a cast of particularity, with a want of softness in her manners, robs her of the good opinion she would otherwise gain,” she wrote. “It is of great consequence to a woman to keep off all disagreeable manners, for the world does not mind our intrinsic worth so much as the fashion of us, and will not easily forgive our not pleasing.” But this need to please had risks of its own, as Mrs. Montagu acknowledged: The men suffer for their levity in this case, for in a woman’s education little but outward accomplishment is regarded. Some of our sex have an affectation of goodness, others a contempt of it from their education; but the many good women there are in the world are merely so from nature.58

Even as she insisted on the importance of feminine complaisance, she echoed many social commentators’ criticism that this emphasis on outward behavior created shallow and even immoral women. Women’s sense of the importance of mastering politeness is sometimes most visible on those occasions when they failed in the attempt. When Elizabeth Clarke visited London from Somerset in 1700, she wrote to her parents using awkward language that revealed not only her concern for genteel behavior, but also her inexperience in such activities. Describing a visit to the Duke of Leeds’s residence at Wimbledon, she used self-consciously elaborate wording: “every thing Seem’d to conspire for our diversion,” and

58

Elizabeth Montagu to Duchess of Portland, Sandleford, near Newbury, [?] 1743, in Matthew Montagu, ed., The Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, With Some of the Letters of Her Correspondents, 3rd ed., 4 vols. (London: Printed for T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1810–13), 2: 260–1. 175

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“I solaced my person with diverse kind’s of fruitt’s.” “To deny So kind a request,” she said of another invitation, “I must own I muster’d all my Retorick in order to make a civill Speech, & att Last, thô I say itt that Should not Say itt, I come off most gallantly.”59 As an outsider to the fashionable society she was visiting, she could not manage the ease and naturalness of language valued in polite writing and speech, but she was greatly aware of the importance of polite behavior in trying to establish her status there. Other women on the margins of polite society because of geographical isolation or relative poverty felt similarly self-conscious. Lady Sarah Cowper often fretted in her diary about her lack of social skills, which she blamed partly on her husband’s refusal to allow her to engage in the sociability she thought necessary. She worried because, she wrote, “I perceive great Skill is required to make Conversation profitable and pleasant.”60 Half a century later, Catherine Talbot similarly scrutinized her conversational talents. Although she was a friend of several aristocratic women, including the Countess of Hertford, she had neither the birth nor the wealth to make her a fully comfortable participant in elite society, and she was painfully aware of her lack of polite training. In her journal she frequently reexamined her behavior after going out visiting, worrying that she had appeared pedantic or sullen through too much or too little conversation. Following one visit from a female acquaintance of “true Good Breeding,” she wrote despairingly, “For my own part [I] have none of it, am monstrously Selfish Arrogant & Unpolite. How can I Continue so When I feel so strongly the Charm of Politeness?” Perhaps as a result of her insecurity, her evaluation of polite conversation depended heavily on literary sources, in particular Samuel Richardson’s novel, Sir Charles Grandison.61 In women like her, exposed to fashionable society yet not fully part of it, anxieties over sociability took their most acute form.62 But in their concerns for polite behavior they were not alone. For women more securely positioned within the Quality, with higher rank, greater wealth, and better “breeding,” sociability continued to hold great significance for asserting and maintaining their status. Many sought to demonstrate their ease in polite society. After moving to Ireland, Lady

59

Elizabeth Clarke to Edward Clarke, 27 July [1700], Somerset Record Office DD/SF/3833. 60 Lady Sarah Cowper, diary entry, 11 September 1700, HRO D/EP F29, p. 9. 61 Catherine Talbot, journal entry, 19 June 1751, BL Add. MS 46690, fol. 21r. For references to Sir Charles Grandison, see the entries for 18 [December 1751], BL Add. MS 46690, fol. 41r; 28 [December 1751], BL Add. MS 46690, fol. 44v; 12 November [1753], BL Add. MS 46688, fol. 23r; 21 November [1753], BL Add. MS 46688, fol. 26v. 62 On the importance to middle-class people of learning politeness in order to gain acceptance in elite society, see Langford, Polite and Commercial People, pp. 71, 99–102, 109–21; Peter Earle, The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London, 1660–1730 (London: Methuen, 1989), pp. 161–6. 176

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Rawdon wrote to her brother that she was succeeding in her goal of gaining the affections of all, and the esteem of “sensible” people, since unlike all the other women she had encountered, she was not a snob and knew how to sustain a pleasant conversation.63 Being comfortable in a wide variety of situations was also important, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was proud that she had managed to maintain the friendship of both the Duchess of Marlborough and her daughter, despite their ongoing feud.64 In 1755 Frances Boscawen wrote to her husband that her “drum” (a private assembly) had been a huge success. She had been told by a lady there “that so much politeness, accompanied with so much ease, she had never observed in anybody. In short, that I did the honours in a certain way that was agreeable and attentive to everybody, and yet (seemingly) with great ease to myself.”65 This was the polite ideal in a nutshell; her success in this area reinforced her claim to elite status precisely because of her apparently natural “ease” with its polite forms. Sociability’s implications for moral character could be equally important. Many aristocratic women were acutely aware that their behavior was seen as a reflection of their morals, and were careful to emphasize their good choice of company. When Alice Elizabeth Hatton told her father that she was attending court with Lady Suffolk, whom she was certain was “one that both your Lordship & my Lady would have me go with when ever she will please to lett me,” she was showing her awareness of the importance of suitable company.66 Charlotte Fox went out of her way to seek advice on the proper person to stay with when she went to Bath, adding, “I believe there will be scarce any company there this season which makes there be less objection to my going.”67 Mary Delany recorded in her memoirs that as a young woman she attended plays and Lady Strafford’s assembly but not Lady Chetwind’s, because the latter was held on Sundays.68 Seeking an inconspicuous place to meet her suitor, Lady Mary Pierrepont rejected one of his suggestions because she disliked the company she would find there: “I am no where so much upon

63

Elizabeth, Lady Rawdon to Earl of Huntingdon, Moira, Ireland, 13 December 1752, HMC Hastings III, pp. 78–9. 64 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Edward Wortley, 17 July [1748], in Halsband, ed., Complete Letters, 2: 406. 65 Frances Boscawen to Edward Boscawen, 16 April 1755, in Cecil Aspinall-Oglander, ed. Admiral’s Wife: Being the Life and Letters of The Hon. Mrs. Edward Boscawen from 1719 to 1761 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1940), p. 166. 66 Alice Elizabeth Hatton to Lord Hatton, 29 May [?1699], BL Add. MS 29575, fols. 341v–342r. 67 Charlotte Fox to Lady Betty Hastings, 27 September [1727], in Hastings Wheler, ed., Hastings Wheler Letters, p. 80. 68 Mary Delany, memoir, in Llanover, ed. Autobiography and Correspondence, 1: 67. See also Mary Pendarves to Ann Granville, Brook Street, 23 January 1738/9, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 2: 26–27. 177

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my guard, and should quite leave off them sort of Assemblys if I was so much my own Mistrisse as not to fear disobliging a companny of silly impertinent women.”69 Lady Mary’s remarks reveal the significance of reputation, as she both disapproved of these women and feared their wrath. The converse of the potential for polite sociability to establish status was the damage that associating with the wrong people could bring to a woman’s reputation. Didactic authors were unanimous in their assertion that being seen with women of blemished reputations would ruin even the purest of heart.70 Aristocratic women have sometimes been seen as immune to such concerns, but they often expressed a sense of the importance and delicacy of female reputation in terms that would be familiar to such writers. When her sister-inlaw was the subject of rumors about extramarital affairs and bad company, Lady Anne Strafford was careful not to associate with her, and portrayed her invitations as snares: I must say She has Laid as many Trapp’s to Draw me into her Gang of company as ever anybody did but she has never accomplishd her design for I have been but twice to see her since I cam to town & then I did only make her A formall viset. . . . I am not so much A fool but I can see through her designs for she thinks if she introduces all her folk’s to me if the world reflects on her for Keeping such company she’ll say that I keep them Company as well as she.71

Lady Strafford also expressed her disapproval of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu for gadding about from visit to visit instead of staying home with her husband.72 The Duke of Kingston’s mistress, on the other hand, won praise for her discretion in staying away from visitors to the Duke’s estate, thus saving ladies from the embarrassment of having to speak to her.73

69

Lady Mary Pierrepont to Edward Wortley, [16 February 1711], in Halsband, ed., Complete Letters, 1: 79. 70 Spectator 205 (25 October 1711), in Donald F. Bond, ed., The Spectator, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 2: 303–4; Edward Moore and Henry Brooke, Fables for the Female Sex (London: R. Francklin, 1744), pp. 115–16; An Essay on Modern Gallantry. Address’d to Men of Honour, Men of Pleasure, and Men of Sense. With a Seasonable Admonition to the Young Ladies of Great Britain (London: M. Cooper, (1750?)), pp. 39–40; [William Kenrick], The Whole Duty of Woman. By a Lady. Written at the Desire of a Noble Lord (London: R. Baldwin, 1753), pp. 19, 21–2; Thomas Marriott, Female Conduct: Being an Essay on the Art of Pleasing. To be Practised by the Fair Sex, Before, and After Marriage. A Poem, in Two Books (London: W. Owen, 1759), p. 34. 71 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 28 December 1711, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 54r–54v. She was also deeply critical of her brother-in-law for allowing himself to be mocked for his blindness in not perceiving his wife’s adultery. 72 Lady Strafford to Countess of Huntingdon, Wentworth Castle, 26 August 1733, HMC Hastings III, p. 17. 73 Lady North to Lady Kaye, Nottingham, [July? 1739], HMC Dartmouth III, p. 158. 178

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Sometimes sexual reputation could be used as a weapon to compromise others’ social standing. Lady Catherine Stanhope sharply criticized her sister for wishing to visit London when “her affairs have been so much the discourse of this place that she need not, I think, add to it by making her appearance.”74 Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, constantly threatened her rebellious daughters and granddaughters with ruin to their reputation when they associated with people she disliked. At one point in her quarrel with the Duchess of Montagu, Sarah warned against spending “every day of Your life in a Publick place,” because it was encouraging men to insult her reputation.75 And Sarah balanced her attempts to preserve a semblance of family unity with threats to ruin her children’s reputations by disclosing their bad behavior – threats which culminated in her “Account” of their quarrels, circulated in manuscript among her friends.76 In 1716 Countess Cowper recorded in her diary that a political enemy had sought to ruin her relations with the Princess of Wales by accusing her of an affair with the King. Lady Cowper responded simply by asserting her chastity and remarking that it “was a Sorry Vertue, that wanted arguments to prove it,” but she could not ignore the accusation.77 When rumors circulated that Anne Vane was pregnant with the Prince of Wales’s child in 1730, she felt obliged to write to Henrietta Howard, Bedchamber Woman to the Queen, to defend her reputation by naming the women of good character with whom she spent her time.78 Yet even open violation of sexual norms did not always have straightforward effects, and social situations were complicated by the difficulties of determining when a reputation was irretrievably damaged. Despite the conduct authors’ attempts to create an absolute division between virtue and sin, in practice the wealth and rank of an individual could muffle criticism. Disapproval of sexual misconduct had to be weighed against the demands of politeness and the social or political clout of the woman in question. Anne Vane’s letter had a certain irony given that Henrietta was widely 74 Lady Catherine Stanhope to Lady Betty Hastings, 29 December [n.y.], in Hastings Wheler, ed., Hastings Wheler Letters, p. 5. 75 Copy of letter from Duchess of Marlborough to Duchess of Montagu, Windsor Lodge, 12 May [1711], BL Add. MS 61451, fols. 16–17. “Public places” in this instance meant assemblies. 76 See, e.g., Duchess of Marlborough to Lady Henrietta Godolphin, 9 May 1715, BL Add. MS 61432, fols. 104v–105v; Duchess of Marlborough, “Green Book” narratives, BL Add. MS 61451, fol. 13 and passim. In this instance the desire to keep family conflicts private lost out to the desire to vindicate herself to her friends. 77 Countess Cowper, diary entry, 4 February 1715/16, HRO D/EP F205. The Princess praised her response, contrasting it with that of a woman facing similar rumors who had gotten her husband to write a certified letter testifying to his belief in her virtue. 78 Anne Vane to Henrietta Howard, 5 October 1730, BL Add. MS 22629, fols. 28v–29r. Vane’s pregnancy was widely reported and satirized: F. G. Stephens and M. D. George, eds., Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, 11 vols. (London: By order of the Trustees, 1870–1945), print no. 1905.

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acknowledged to be George II’s mistress; but Mrs. Howard’s extreme discretion (as well as her avoidance of pregnancy) enabled her to maintain her social standing.79 The Duchess of Marlborough’s daughter, Henrietta, had an openly adulterous affair with William Congreve, by whom she bore a daughter, yet her great wealth and lineage, combined with her husband’s complaisance, enabled her to remain at the height of elite society.80 Concerns about family reputation could, ironically, mitigate the effects of sexual misconduct. Despite complaining about her sister-in-law’s flaunting of her adulterous affairs, Lady Strafford could not break off relations completely, lest she create a public breach in her family.81 Frances Boscawen similarly continued to pay civilities to a friend’s wife whom she considered sexually disreputable. Although she was considered “outrageously virtuous” by some people, Mrs. Boscawen informed her husband, “yet rather than hurt a friend of yours, I would for once have visited a W[hore].”82 Social power and the demands of politeness vied with the ostensibly unalterable effects of a woman’s lost chastity, and the outcome was far from predetermined. Henrietta, Lady Luxborough, provides a particularly vivid example of one woman’s use of the rules of politeness to combat social ostracism. When her husband accused her of adultery and banished her to Warwickshire, she should, according to the didactic literature, have been expelled from polite society. But as we have seen in previous chapters, she refused to accept the role of penitent sinner – or sinner at all – thus forcing her elite acquaintances to confront head-on the question of her reputation and openly either shun or accept her. Her old friend the Countess of Hertford, for instance, resumed correspondence with her after several years, despite thinking that she ought to behave and dress with more decorum.83 In 1750, Ann Dewes had to choose how to behave when Lady Luxborough invited her into her house while Ann

79

See Chapter 3 above. Frances Harris, A Passion for Government: The Life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 258–9, 276. 81 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 27 November 1711, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 31v; same to same, St. James’s Square, 5 December 1711, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 39v; same to same, St. James’s Square, 28 December 1711, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 54; same to same, St. James’s Square, 12 August 1712, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 193v; same to same, St. James’s Square, 19 September 1712, BL Add. MS 22226, fols. 220v–221r. 82 Frances Boscawen to Edward Boscawen, 28 October 1756, in Aspinall-Oglander, ed., Admiral’s Wife, pp. 221–2. She took the phrase “outrageously virtuous” from Spectator 266 (4 January 1712). 83 Countess of Hertford to her son, Percy Lodge, 12 August 1743, in Helen Sard Hughes, ed., The Gentle Hertford: Her Life and Letters (New York: Macmillan, 1940), p. 277. Lady Sarah Bunbury’s divorce for adultery had a similarly ambiguous effect, as her family initially demanded that she act the penitent sinner and withdraw from the world, but eventually came to accept a partial rehabilitation: Stella Tillyard, Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox, 1740–1832 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1994), pp. 286, 288–93. 80

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was passing through her estate. Forced into engaging in sociable contact, Mrs. Dewes felt obliged to obey the rules of politeness and reciprocate, but she was also worried about her reputation. Her sister, Mary Delany, advised her to accept the acquaintance: If she leads a discreet life, and does generous and charitable things, she ought to be taken notice of, as an encouragement to go on in a right path, and your conversation and example may be of infinite service to her. She has lively parts, is very well bred, and knows the polite world, and you may, I think, divert yourself with her as much as you can.

But Mrs. Delany equally claimed that Lady Luxborough could never be a truly virtuous or attractive woman.84 Two years later, when Ann ran into Henrietta at Bath and suffered the dilemma all over again, Mary continued to advise a mixture of politeness and prudence. Her counsel was governed mainly by the fact that “as people of fashion and reputation do not shun her I see no reason why you should do so in any remarkable way.”85 She was more amused than concerned over her sister’s fears, but her recommendations revealed a sense of the balance between the need for virtue and the demands of polite society. Politeness helped Lady Luxborough to maintain her status in the Quality, despite the widespread acceptance of a discourse that defined her as a social pariah. Politeness was not merely a convenient formality for Lady Luxborough, however; it was absolutely central to her construction of her identity. Her correspondence with her friends, especially William Shenstone, functioned in large part as a continual reiteration of her status as a woman of quality. Just as her lavish expenditure of effort and money on her estate represented her claims to gentility through consumption, so her letters frequently took politeness to extremes. When some friends left her after a short visit in 1749, she mourned the day that “must be marked with the blackest ink in the kalendar of my life.”86 She also took violations of politeness seriously, as when she refused Shenstone’s request for her influence with a potential patroness because the woman in question had once spent “a considerable time” nearby

84

Ann Dewes to Bernard Granville, Mapleburrough Green, 12 August 1750, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 2: 578; Mary Delany to Ann Dewes, Mount Panther, 24 August 1750, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 2: 585–7; same to same, Delville, 28 September 1750, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 2: 595. 85 Mary Delany to Ann Dewes, Delville, 7 April 1752, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 3: 109. The acquaintance continued: Ann Dewes to George Ballard, Welsbourn, 4 November 1752, Bod. MS Ballard 43, fol. 227v. 86 Lady Luxborough to William Shenstone, [mid-November 1749], in Letters Written by the Late Right Honourable Lady Luxborough, to William Shenstone, Esq. (London: J. Dodsley, 1775), pp. 162–3. 181

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“without calling or even sending to me.”87 Precisely because she was in exile, she fashioned an identity that depended on her maintenance of polite behavior and language in order to buttress her claims to elite status. Through such examples of the relationship between politeness and reputation, we can see the high stakes involved in the details of social interaction. Women of quality took care to understand the rules of sociability and politeness, and they were proud of their successes. At the same time, they could be acutely sensitive to violations of politeness and often used such slights in order to damage the reputations of others. They did so because they recognized the role of these rituals in maintaining social status. But if politeness or its absence could be used to compromise reputations, it could also help to protect them. Conduct writers hoped to create strict boundaries between good and bad women; in practice, however, these boundaries could be remarkably permeable.

The politics of politeness Although didactic writers agreed that a woman’s sociability could affect her reputation, they saw little real purpose in sociable activities; they agreed that such behavior was at best harmless. Often, however, these rituals held implications far beyond women’s personal reputations. Wealth and title were of course crucial in determining status, but they were largely unchanging over the short term. The day-to-day sociable interactions of individuals, on the other hand, provided the context in which power and status could be renegotiated and contested. In women’s correspondence with their husbands and families – “behind the scenes” of the social transactions themselves – we can see them making explicit the public implications of these supposedly private, trivial acts. To say so is not to claim that we thus obtain a transparent reading of what actually happened; aristocratic women had good reason to present themselves to their families as engaging in such activities. The correspondence does, however, enable us to see how they interpreted the politics of politeness. The patterns of feminine sociability based on visiting and other leisure activities provided important networks that women used to promote their own and their families’ interests. Not only were the new forms of leisure (discussed in Chapter 2) strongly associated with femininity, but visiting in particular was recognized as an activity dominated by women.88 The growing

87

Lady Luxborough to William Shenstone, Barrells, 8 February 1754, in Letters to Shenstone, p. 374. 88 On gender-based distinctions in patterns of sociability, emphasizing the tensions as well as the symbiotic relations between the two, see Whyman, Sociability and Power, ch. 4; Vickery, Gentleman’s Daughter, ch. 6. See also Stana Nenadic, “Middle-Rank Consumers 182

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centrality of London life and cosmopolitan culture accentuated this trend. And women of quality recognized sociability as a major part of their lives, especially after marriage, when they took on much of the responsibility for representing their families in society. Shortly after Lord Strafford married, for instance, his mother wrote to him that “Lady Strafford has al the fyne Ladys in town to vesitt her & she is in great State & order as can be.”89 Lady Wentworth believed that her son would be pleased to hear such news of his wife because it showed that she was successfully upholding her responsibilities. In contrast, when the Duchess of Roxburgh married and did not immediately receive visitors, London society associated this social failure with general disapproval of her remarriage.90 Not everyone enjoyed these visits. Lady Diana Russell wrote shortly after her wedding of beginning “the Tedious work of returning visits.”91 Similarly, the Countess of Hertford apologized to her mother in 1719 for cutting a letter short, describing a visit as an unpleasant responsibility: “I must go abroad seven mile to dine with a disagreeable woman who minds place, politics, and dress.”92 Despite their exaggerated tone, such comments reflected women’s perception of such sociability as a duty – “work” – rather than mere pleasure. By emphasizing this aspect of sociability, women could portray their activities as serious and significant, rather than the idle time-wasting so often condemned in social commentary. Nor were they simply being disingenuous. Women’s descriptions of their own behavior frequently reveal their awareness of the importance of sociability to the public presentation of the family. The Countess of Strafford, for instance, was careful to ensure the success of her weekly assembly, one of the first private assemblies and a popular event among people of quality during the many years it was held.93 At the new year in 1738, she wrote to her and Domestic Culture in Edinburgh and Glasgow 1720–1840,” Past and Present 145 (1994): 146–8. J. A. Sharpe, Early Modern England: A Social History 1550–1760 (London: Edward Arnold, 1987), p. 196, discusses sociability as a means for merchants’ wives to assert status within their communities. 89 Lady Wentworth to Lord Strafford, 13 November [1711], BL Add. MS 22225, fol. 104r. 90 Lady Catherine Clarke to Lady Betty Hastings, 5 January [1707/8], in Hastings Wheler, ed., Hastings Wheler Letters, p. 34; Lady C. Schomberg to Lady Betty Hastings, London, 7 January [1707/8], in Hastings Wheler, ed., Hastings Wheler Letters, p. 38. 91 Lady Diana Russell to Duchess of Marlborough, Grosvenor Street, [October 1731], BL Add. MS 61448, fol. 10r–10v. 92 Countess of Hertford to her mother, [Marlborough], 1719, in Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, p. 52. 93 On the originality of Lady Strafford’s assembly, see Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 1: 67. See also Mary Pendarves to Ann Granville, 29 February 1727/8, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 1: 159–60; same to same, Brook Street, 23 January 1738/9, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 2: 26–7; Lady Diana Russell to Duchess of Marlborough, Grosvenor Street, 9 December [1731], BL Add. MS 61448, fol. 40. 183

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husband that she was postponing the start of her assembly for another week, “for this thursday I shou’d not meet perhap’s with people Enough to have a full Assembly & I own like you I wou’d have it full the first time & I dont doubt but it will be so.”94 When her assemblies went well, she described with pleasure a “monsterouse . . . Crowd” of “all the People of Quality in town.”95 A large gathering visibly demonstrated the Straffords’ social position not only to themselves but to all who attended or knew about the assemblies. Frances Boscawen was equally aware of the implications of her behavior for her family’s status, explicitly describing herself to her husband as his representative while he was away at sea. In 1756 she mused that the one area where she felt he was lucky in having married her was in her effect on his “public character”: when I hear of a Lady An-n [Anson] who gives the Sea Officers an account of her friseurs, and a Lady Lyttelton who entertains the literate of her table with the wonderful cleverness of her French lap-dog, I cannot but reflect with indignation how much ’tis in a woman’s power to distress a brave or learned man amongst his own society and friends, at his table and round his domestic hearth, from whence a man should draw the best sources of social felicity, ease, comfort and satisfaction.

Contrasting herself to these wives of public figures, she attributed her success in helping her husband’s reputation to her intense desire to please his friends.96 A description of visitors similarly combined a mockery of polite conventions with an acute awareness of their importance, when she wrote that she had been visited “first by a Justice (of the Quorum, aye and rotilorum, too, for aught I know), and secondly by a Right Honourable Peeress. But, to deliver myself more like a woman of Surrey, I should say that I have been visited by Mr. Weston and Lady Onslow, not forgetting the jovial Benny.”97 We can now begin to see just how high the stakes of such informal socializing could be. Letters reveal why it was important to know the rules of polite behavior; women’s mastery of politeness helped maintain their place within the Quality. If they failed, as Frances Boscawen remarked, they had the power to embarrass not only themselves but their families as well. Mrs. Boscawen’s awareness of the influence of a wife on her husband’s reputation also brings us to the most important role of female politeness and sociability. They were tools in the power dynamics of the elite, part of the

94

Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 10 January 1737/8, BL Add. MS 31145, fol. 216r. 95 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 15 January 1736/7, BL Add. MS 31145, fols. 149v–150r. 96 Frances Boscawen to Edward Boscawen, Hatchlands Park, 4 October 1756, in AspinallOglander, ed., Admiral’s Wife, p. 206. 97 Frances Boscawen to Edward Boscawen, Hatchlands Park, “Thursday, 10 p. m.” [c. 1759], in Aspinall-Oglander, ed., Admiral’s Wife, p. 281. 184

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negotiations of political and social alliances through which people of quality maintained their supremacy in English society. Precisely because sociability was ostensibly personal and informal, it was central to women’s strategies for maintaining or establishing power, complementing the overtly public roles of elite men. The success of such sociability depended on people sharing an awareness of its implications and importance, without openly acknowledging this significance. When the Earl of Strafford’s sister, Isabella Arundell, formed a friendship with Abigail Masham, Queen Anne’s favorite, both his mother and his wife recognized the importance of keeping up civil contacts with Isabella. Lady Wentworth complained to Strafford about Isabella’s overindulgence in political scheming, but admitted that “we must over Loock all for she is a very great favoret of Lady Massums.”98 Her remark was directly echoed by Lady Strafford during a quarrel with Mrs. Arundell: “as she is very great with Lady Massam I will be very Civil to her.”99 Lady Strafford’s own visit from Lady Masham six weeks later was an occasion for self-congratulation in a context where such sociability was seen as a sign of status and political favor.100 The Countess’s extensive use of the ostensibly private activities of visiting and dining to further her and her husband’s political aims can be seen most clearly, however, in her relationship with Abigail Masham’s cousins, the Earl and Countess of Oxford. Thus, in the letter quoted in the introduction to this book, she announced plans to visit Lord Oxford’s ex-housekeeper since she had heard that Oxford appreciated such civilities; she hoped that this action would “be of Service” to Strafford.101 She was careful to keep up friendships with the entire family, remarking with pleasure that Lord and Lady Oxford trusted only her to take their daughter to social events.102 Other letters reveal the success of her efforts, as when she reported in 1712 that she was “very well with Lord Treasurers Lady & am with her very often, not that I am extremly fond of her Conversation but she mak’s great court to me & I remember whose wife she is.”103 Her effort apparently paid off when she was able to use her connections with Lady Oxford to get the Lord Treasurer to support a bill for Strafford in the House of Lords. Anne Strafford visited Lady

98

Lady Wentworth to Lord Strafford, 23 December [1712], BL Add. MS 22225, fols. 202v–203r. 99 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 8 February 1711/12, BL Add. MS 22226, fols. 290v–291r. 100 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 21 March 1712, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 107v. 101 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 5 December 1711, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 39r–39v. 102 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 6 May 1712, BL Add. MS 22226, fols. 157v–158r. 103 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 7 March 1712, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 91r. 185

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Oxford to request the interview with Lord Oxford, and received in return “A very handsom Letter” from Lady Oxford to announce an upcoming visit from her husband. The result of Anne’s talk with Lord Oxford – again, in the guise of informal sociability – was a promise of his support for the bill.104 Over and over, Lady Strafford described her social relationships in terms of both their politeness and their public implications; the two were inextricably entwined for her. The bonds she helped forge were strengthened when Oxford and Strafford eventually became godparents to each other’s children.105 Nowhere was the importance of politeness clearer than in the intensely competitive, elaborately ritualized, and tight-knit community of the court. Prior to getting any patronage at court, for example, one had to “kiss hands” with the monarch – to have an official introduction. Although this was a deeply political ceremony, participants like the Countess of Plymouth focused on its personal aspects. She emphasized the Duchess of Marlborough’s “very obliging manner” of introducing her, and told of how the Queen had received her “very graciously.”106 Court rituals pushed politeness to its most extreme and artificial, but less ornate forms of politeness also governed informal interactions at court. Within this world, based on ideals of personal service to the monarch yet dominated by political appointments and struggles, sociability became highly charged.107 The notion that service at court represented a personal relationship with the royal family created a complex language of political favor. When the Duchess of Montagu remarked on the number or lack of bows from the Prince of Wales, she was acknowledging that such civilities indicated her political favor with him, or its absence. She noted the frequency of bows she received, hoping eventually to win the greater favor of a few words.108 Lady Irwin described her service as a Bedchamber Lady to the new Princess of Wales in similar terms: “The Prince seemed vastly pleased, and embraced the Princess I believe ten times while I was in the room; and afterwards with great civility kissed me, and thanked me for the care I had taken of the Princess,” she wrote to her father after her first day of service.109 Of course the royal marriage was

104 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 18 March 1711/12, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 103r–103v. 105 Lord Strafford to Lord Oxford, Utrecht, 14/3 March 1713, HMC Portland IX, p. 372; same to same, Stainborough, 22 October 1725, HMC Portland VI, p. 9; Lady Strafford to Lord Oxford, Freston Hall, 22 October 1725, HMC Portland VI, p. 9. 106 Quoted in R. O. Bucholz, The Augustan Court: Queen Anne and the Decline of Court Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), p. 154. 107 Bucholz, Augustan Court, p. 163 and ch. 7, passim; John M. Beattie, The English Court in the Reign of George I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967). 108 Duchess of Montagu to Duchess of Marlborough, 3 November [?1716], BL Add. MS 61450, fol. 109r; same to same, [November 1716?], BL Add. MS 61450, fol. 110. 109 Anne, Viscountess Irwin to Lord Carlisle, Greenwich, “Easter Monday” [26 April 1736], HMC Carlisle, p. 170.

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made for dynastic and diplomatic reasons, yet Lady Irwin discussed it in terms of a loving union between two individuals and emphasized the personal “civility” with which she was treated. Dorothy Dyves also focused on personal relationships when she reported on her first interview with Princess Amelia after being appointed a Maid of Honor. The Princess put her at ease immediately and “spoke a great deal about my behaviour, and said she should be in the wrong if she did not like mine,” wrote Dorothy to her aunt, who had helped to get her the post. “This I could not omit saying, as being very sensible that whatever I do right is entirely owing to your goodness.”110 The settings of such interactions mattered as well; intimate settings implied an intimate relationship, and there was a well-known hierarchy of court chambers. In November 1711, Lady Strafford visited the Queen’s bedchamber, where, she announced proudly, the Queen “spoke more to me then to any body that was there.”111 Disputes at court, particularly those within the royal family, meant that the rituals of respect and deference (or their absence) became especially politicized. Women with court appointments suffered along with their husbands whose political fortunes were on the wane. “Lady Burlington has waited a fortnight at Hampton Court, but by what I hear by the useage she met with she might as well have quited when her lord did,” remarked Lady Strafford on one such occasion.112 Lady Burlington was not obliged to leave office at the same time as her husband since officially their posts were not related, but the rude treatment she experienced got the point across. During the rift between George I and his son, which led to the establishment of rival courts, participating in the rituals of the one meant exclusion from the other. Margaret Bradshaw suggested to Henrietta Howard that she might be tempted to switch allegiances from the Prince’s to the King’s court, “for I have bin often with her Grace of Marlbrow since I was att Windsor, she has a deserning eye & has found me out to be a woman of great parts & may be she will mention me to the King.”113 She was joking, but her joke depended on her friend’s mutual recognition that these were the mechanisms by which alliances were sorted out on a day-to-day basis. Families could be divided by this dispute, as Ann Pitt discovered when she faced a quandary about whether or not she could be seen visiting her brother or friends at the other court.114 110 Dorothy Dyves to Charlotte Clayton, 14 August [n.y.], in Thomson, ed., Sundon Memoirs, 1: 102–3. 111 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 25 November 1711, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 29r–29v. 112 Lady Strafford to Countess of Huntingdon, Wentworth Castle, 26 August 1733, HMC Hastings III, p. 17. 113 Margaret Bradshaw to Henrietta Howard, “Satterday night” [n.d], BL Add. MS 22627, fol. 107v. 114 Duchess of Queensberry to Ann Pitt, Ambresbury, [?] October [1737], HMC Fortescue I, p. 101; same to same, Ambresbury, 18 November 1737, HMC Fortescue I, p. 104.

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Equally as important as relationships with the royal family was the constant negotiation for power between courtiers. The diary of Mary, Countess Cowper, during the early years of George I’s reign, vividly portrays her participation in such struggles and her reading of the smallest personal slights in terms of their political meanings. Lady Cowper and the other Englishwomen of the court often quarreled with the Germans installed there by George I. But the rules of politeness created a forum in which to compete without openly violating the harmony of the court. Thus she recorded a conversation in which a German lady insisted that: [English] women did not look like women of quality . . . whereas those that were [foreigners] held up their heads & held out their breasts, & made themselves look as great & Stately as they can, & more nobly & like Quality than the others. To which [Lady Deloraine] Reply’d, we show our Quality by our Births & Titles, Madam & not by thrusting out our bubbys.115

The question of how to show “quality” was at the center of debates over rank and power, and it came up again and again. Complaining about another German a few days later, Mary reported that Mlle. Schutz had insisted that foreigners should always have precedence over the English ladies. “By which argument,” Lady Cowper wryly noted, “she must hold it reasonable for her Chambermaid to go into a room before the Dutchess of Sommerset.” She could not afford to antagonize Mlle. Schutz too openly, however: “If it was not for her Uncle no body woud endure her. But one is forc’d to suffer many things upon his Account.”116 Here the political struggles underlying the disputes about civility became explicit. Conflicts about “quality” and precedence went to the heart of power relations within the court and English politics as a whole. Lady Cowper was not alone in connecting the worlds of politeness and public affairs. Even seemingly minor issues of ceremony could lead to serious conflicts. Isabella Ramsden reported a “violent dispute . . . between the dukes’ and earls’ daughters about holding the train” for the new Queen’s coronation in 1761.117 The Duchess of Marlborough was irate after “one in the Queen’s family” twice borrowed her lodgings in the royal palace without permission, but, she added maliciously, “her edducation has not been the best, and all that she does is suitable to it.”118 Just how great the association between politics and politeness generally was can be seen in a 1733 letter 115 Countess Cowper, diary entry, 4 April 1716, HRO D/EP F205. Words given in brackets appear in the original diary in code; a key for the code appears at the end of the volume. 116 Countess Cowper, diary entry, 18 April 1716, HRO D/EP F205. 117 Mrs. Isabella Ramsden to Mrs. Charles Ingram, Charles Street, 8 August [1761], HMC Var. Coll. VIII, pp. 178–9. 118 Duchess of Marlborough to the Honorable Mrs. Coke, Windsor Park, 1 November [1709], HMC Cowper III, p. 83.

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from Lady Betty Germaine to Jonathan Swift, in which she insisted that her hospitality did not depend on political allegiances: “as my friends are in and out of all sides, so my house receives them all together, and people meet here that would fight in any other place.”119 But she clearly understood herself to be exceptional. The remark came, moreover, in the context of defending the Countess of Suffolk against Swift’s charges that Lady Suffolk was a typical courtier in failing to keep her promises to her friends. Swift himself decried “that spiteful French fashion of the Whiggish ladies” in boycotting a court celebration in 1712.120 But in an era that lacked the notion of a “loyal opposition” while party spirit remained high, demonstrating political opinions through such behavior made sense.

Sincerity and sentiment As we have seen, one of the chief characteristics of politeness was supposed to be its naturalness; polite behavior was displayed through an ease in social interaction that at least appeared to be natural and was supposed to represent a combination of birth and breeding. Yet if politeness was revealed through outward behavior, there was always the risk that it was nothing more. Distinguishing true politeness from mere outward forms was thus a problem, particularly for women; many didactic writers argued that the artificiality of fashionable politeness meant that a polite woman could not be virtuous since she was not “natural.” In response to these concerns, another, supposedly natural concept emerged. This was sensibility, which valued spontaneous interaction and stressed emotion over elegance and self-control. Sensibility was, not surprisingly, particularly associated with women, who were seen as more open in their emotions than men.121 As the values of sensibility became increasingly strong in English culture, some women of quality chose to emphasize their sincerity in contrast to the corruption of fashionable society’s politeness. Doing so gave them a chance to assert their virtue in terms that echoed the ideas of conduct writers. Yet this practice remained in uneasy tension with its increasing use as a rhetorical strategy. Just as politeness easily slipped into mere convention, so, too, did frankness and spontaneity soon become conventional. 119 Lady Betty Germaine to Jonathan Swift, 8 February 1733, quoted in Lewis Melville, Lady Suffolk and her Circle (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1924), p. 205. 120 Jonathan Swift to Esther Johnson, Letter XL, 5–6 February 1711/12, in Swift, Journal to Stella, ed. H. Williams, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), 2: 480–1. 121 John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), pp. 119–21; G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Janet Todd, Sensibility: An Introduction (London: Methuen, 1986); Langford, Polite and Commercial People, ch. 10. But see Carter, Emergence of Polite Society, ch. 3, on promoters of masculine sensbility.

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The court was proverbial for its lack of sincerity. As the Countess of Orkney lamented, the court offered “nothing but ceremony, no manner of conversation! . . . Reflection, how vain is ambition if these [courtiers] are the ornaments of Courts; and upon serious consideration what is valuable but friendship maintained by true worth, and how hard is that to be found uninterrupted by circumstances or malice.”122 When Lady Pomfret filled a letter with court gossip, she contrasted this news with life in the country: Thus, dear Lady Sundon, you see I am plunged as deep in chit-chat as if I had not been out of it; and it is now but like a delightful dream, that calmness, that freedom of thought, of look, and action, enjoyed at home and improved at Sundon; but here it is otherwise, and our first parents, at their leaving Paradise, could not find it more necessary to hide part of their bodies than we at Court do to hide part of our minds.123

In response to the problem of insincerity, some women chose to emphasize their own, unfashionable sincerity, a rhetorical strategy that served a variety of purposes. It could, for example, be used to mask actual power relationships. One of the most famous such cases was the friendship between Queen Anne and Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who referred to each other for a time as “Mrs. Morley” and “Mrs. Freeman” – nicknames that helped them ignore their official mistress–servant relationship.124 When their friendship ended, in part because the Duchess pushed her role as friend too far by trying to dictate royal policy, Sarah gave an account of her history at court to some of her friends. The Duchess’s portrayal of their relationship as a case of friendship betrayed encouraged her supporters to express themselves in similar terms. Jael Boscawen remarked that among the papers “there are some nobler stroaks of friendship, then this depraved age will bear, I doubt.”125 Sarah’s well-known insistence on her own sincerity elicited equally strong assurances from her friends and acquaintances. Lady Frances Bathurst’s promises of undying friendship were typical: This doth not come all to gather [i.e. altogether] from the Virtue of Constancy, but from knowing of the World, and finding very very [sic] few to be compar’d to you, I doe not goe about to Complement, for all I say to you, I will not Contredict, noe not in a thought.126 122 Countess of Orkney to Lady Harriet Harley, [June 1714], HMC Portland V, pp. 463–4; quoted in part in Bucholz, Augustan Court, p. 246. Bucholz gives the likely date as 1711. 123 Countess of Pomfret to Lady Sundon, Hanover Square, 21 August 1735, in Thomson, ed., Sundon Memoirs, 2: 298. 124 On this friendship, see Harris, Passion for Government. 125 Jael Boscawen to Duchess of Marlborough, 15 October 1710, BL Add. MS 61441, fol. 91r–91v. 126 Lady Frances Bathurst to Countess of Marlborough, Windsor, 28 October [1701?], BL Add. MS 61455, fol. 75r–75v.

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On other occasions, the language of sentiment and sincerity helped to create a persona of virtue for its author. When Catherine Talbot praised the Duchess of Somerset for combining dignity with “Sincerity,” she complained that “Modern fine Ladies have neither good breeding nor Sincerity.”127 Mary Astell similarly remarked that her own letters had “nothing to recommend them but the Sincerity of the Writer: A strange sort of Quality, which every body seeks, & few care to find.”128 Women like Talbot and Astell might be expected to express such sentiments since they lived at the margins of elite society, but these ideas existed even in the highest ranks. In 1733, Mary Pendarves insisted that she preferred “duty to my mother, and the conversation of a country girl, (my sister), to all the pomp and splendour of the Court. Is this virtue, or is it stupidity?”129 The implied answer was obvious. Many women also contrasted their true friendships with the demands of fashionable life. Lady Abigail Dupplin, for instance, described Lady Cardigan as embodying the ideal “woman of quality,” adding, “Amongst the many visits of ceremony there is very little satisfaction, but when one meets with such an acquaintance it is very happy.”130 Lady Luxborough frequently insisted on her own spontaneous style, just as she stressed the rusticity of her elaborately landscaped estate. After telling William Shenstone that his letters would “always be . . . welcome to me in their common garb,” she added, “I follow the rule I give, and write what comes upper-most; but it is in me a fault, as I am not privileged to do so by any of the gifts of nature, except artless sincerity be one.”131 As these examples show, however, the rejection of fashionable politeness easily developed into yet another fashionable convention. Sincerity and openness were highly valued, but they became a rhetorical strategy exploited for other purposes and frequently employed in cases where the writers sought political or social favors. The denial of ulterior motives itself became a necessary rhetorical gesture, much like the announcement in valedictions that the correspondent was one’s “most humble obedient servant.” Henrietta Howard and her friends, for instance, universally insisted on their sincerity in contrast to the formalities of elite life. Martha Blount assured her “that tho there are hunderds [sic] that have many more naturall beautys, none can be more free from any Art.”132 Margaret Bradshaw insisted that “no accedent but 127

Catherine Talbot, journal entry, 3 November [1753], BL Add. MS 46688, fol. 18v. Mary Astell to Lady Ann Coventry, Chelsea, 1 July 1717, quoted in Ruth Perry, The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 378–9. Perry does not expand the abbreviations in her edition. 129 Mary Pendarves to Jonathan Swift, Gloucester, 24 October 1733, in Llanover, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, 1: 422. 130 Lady Abigail Dupplin to Abigail Harley, London, 2 June 1711, HMC Portland V, pp. 3–4. 131 Lady Luxborough to William Shenstone, Barrells, Easter Sunday 1748, in Letters to Shenstone, p. 12. 132 Martha Blount to Henrietta Howard, [n.d.], BL Add. MS 22626, fols. 11v–12r. 128

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death” could end her friendship, and added, “I think you very sincere” as well.133 Henrietta herself playfully warned John Gay that “I (that am Grown old in Court’s) can assure you; Sincerity is so very unthriving that I can never give Consent that you shou’d practice it, (Excepting to three or four people that I think may deserve it from you, I am in that number).”134 But as the light tone here suggests, such rhetoric, so carefully employed by women like the Duchess of Marlborough and Lady Luxborough, was always vulnerable to mockery. Writing to Horace Walpole, Mary Townshend used the current fashion to excuse her carelessness: There is nothing so advantageous to a female writer as a hurry. . . . You may also conclude I had bad pens and ink; but I am not quite sure it is sentimental to write better, carelessness is very becoming, and really to do anything of this sort with exactness looks as if one never thought of anything else.135

The attempt to create a language of absolute sincerity, like the attempt to create a perfectly “natural” woman, thus created as many problems as it solved. It was impossible to know with certainty whether claims to sincerity were in fact sincere, just as it was impossible to know whether a woman who appeared virtuous actually was. This problem can be seen especially clearly in the courtship letters of Lady Mary Pierrepont and Edward Wortley, as each tried to gauge the sincerity of the other. “Few Women would have spoke so plainly as I have done, but to dissemble more among the things I never do,” insisted Lady Mary during one of these exchanges; “I take more pains to approve my conduct to my selfe than to the world, and would not have to accuse my selfe of a minute’s deceit.”136 Every time she insisted on the depth of her feelings, however, he responded that she was merely being coquettish, and Lady Mary continued to struggle to articulate her feelings after their marriage: I shall passe the whole Evening in my chamber, alone, without any busynesse but thinking of you, in a Manner you would call Affectation, if I should repeat to you. . . . You will accuse me of Deceit when I am opening my Heart to you, and the Plainesse of expressing it will appear Artificial.137 133 Margaret Bradshaw to Henrietta Howard, 29 June [n.y.], BL Add. MS 22627, fol. 119r. 134 Henrietta Howard to John Gay, Richmond Lodge, 22 July [1723], BL Add. MS 22626, fol. 31v. 135 Hon. Mary Townshend to Horace Walpole, Midgham, 30 September [1743], in W. S. Lewis, ed., The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, 48 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937–83), 40: 46. 136 Lady Mary Pierrepont to Edward Wortley, [28 March 1710], in Halsband, ed., Complete Letters, 1: 25. 137 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Edward Wortley, [22 June 1713], in Halsband, ed., Complete Letters, 1: 181. See Cynthia Lowenthal, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Eighteenth-Century Familiar Letter (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1994), ch. 2, for a perceptive analysis of such issues in their correspondence.

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In a society in which the rejection of formality was itself a formality, she was fighting a losing battle.

Conclusion The correspondence of aristocratic women shows them contesting political power in the guise of politeness and sociability. In their letters to potential allies, we can see them using the rituals of politeness and sociability in order to further their own aims. In their letters to husbands and other family members, we can see them explicitly deconstructing the public implications of politeness, sometimes describing their sociability in straightforwardly instrumental terms as they analyzed the benefits of such interactions. It is perhaps unsurprising that in the highly ritualized world of the court, disputes over politeness would form a means by which political power was contested. But even outside the court these issues retained their importance, thanks to the mutual associations of sociability, femininity, and triviality. Early eighteenth-century politeness was the product of a society in which the lines between the private and the public were blurred, in which political success to a large extent depended on proper manipulation of the rules of personal politeness. The rituals of politeness and sociability formed the glue that held the Quality together, as individuals demonstrated their right to participate in that society through their mastery of its rules. The same rituals, however, also provided a forum in which such hierarchies could be contested, as individuals and families sought to position themselves in the face of shifting power relations. Within this system, women played a key role. Their visits, entertainment, and correspondence were activities in which their participation was required even as it was criticized. The politics of aristocratic sociability relied on this blurring of public and private. But polite conventions also reflected the growing emphasis on an ideal separation between the two – an ideal of personal, loyal friendship on the one hand, and disinterested public service on the other. The rhetoric of sentiment and sincerity thus underlined the contradictions inherent in polite society while it sought to mask them.

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Public Life, Influence, and Politics In a 1712 letter, Anne Pye asked for help in getting her brother-in-law a job in the Lynn or Yarmouth customs house. “I dont question but you have your share of trouble frequently of this nature,” Anne apologized, “the inconveniance that attends great men, impossible to sattisfie all.”1 But the “great man” in this case, Lord Treasurer Oxford, was not the recipient of the letter. Instead, Anne was writing to her cousin and friend Abigail Harley, Oxford’s sister. Her comment, moreover, revealed her assumption that Abigail must often receive such requests. Her letter was indeed just one of many such petitions sent to the Harley women, and she was in turn part of a much larger network of obligation and influence among the early eighteenthcentury Quality. The previous chapters of this book have discussed women’s involvement in a wide variety of activities, all of which were in some way acceptable by virtue of their association with femininity. It has been my contention, however, that through such activities the women of this study constantly reworked ideals of femininity, and that their behavior held significant public implications. In a very real sense, then, the personal was political. But direct participation in public life through the exploitation of influence was equally important to many women. Such influence on the local and national level enabled them to achieve power and status by helping their social inferiors and by promoting their own interests. Aristocratic women’s presence in networks of influence stemmed from a widespread interest in and knowledge of public affairs that is visible throughout their correspondence. Such attention is unsurprising given their important roles in forwarding the interests of the elite in all areas of life, but women often went beyond mere curiosity to offer advice to their male relations and friends. These activities were part of a long tradition. When men were away from home, the correspondence of their female relations could be essential in keeping them abreast of changing events in the political realm. Aristocratic women were central to networks of information during the Glorious Revolution, for instance, when they frequently took it for granted that their opinions were both necessary and desired.2 The Countess of Strafford was one of many who took the impact of wifely advice for granted. In 1731, she reported that “Lord Oxford [the second Earl] has been at Court. I want much to know how my Lady takes this expedition of her

1 2

Anne Pye to Abigail Harley, Derby, 11 August 1712, BL Add. MS 70149. Lois G. Schwoerer, “Women and the Glorious Revolution,” Albion 18 (1986): 209–11. 194

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lord’s, for I know, when the King first came to the crown, he had a mind to goe with his friends, and then my Lady opposed it so strongly he was forced to desist.”3 Similarly, the Countess of Portland thought the Duchess of Portland (from the senior branch of the family) had “drawn her lord a little against the Court” despite his own inclinations.4 This reliance on women for information and advice could easily lead to a greater role for some of them in political affairs. When the Catholic Duke and Duchess of Norfolk publicly disavowed any allegiance to the Pretender in 1733, Lady Anne Irwin credited the Duchess for their successful appearance at court: “The Duchess, who is a sensible woman, and must act the man where talking is necessary, behaved much to her credit” and did all the talking, according to Lady Irwin.5 The significance of personal relationships in eighteenth-century politics has long been recognized. Since Lewis Namier’s influential interpretation of eighteenth-century political society as primarily based on kinship connections and patronage, much scholarship has been devoted to tracing such patronage and the degree to which it determined political alliances.6 Namier’s model has come under considerable attack for overestimating the significance of patronage and kinship, but it is clear that patronage remained fundamental to eighteenth-century society, both as a source of power and as a matter of concern for reformers.7 More recently, studies of patronage have turned away from a purely pejorative view to stressing its function in English society. Linda Levy Peck’s work on the Jacobean period, and J. M. Bourne’s study of the nineteenth-century East India Company and Colonial Office, both helpfully draw attention to the widespread view of patronage not as inherently corrupt but as a reasonable means of ensuring that deserving individuals received advancement.8 Both these works also emphasize the benefits of prestige and power that involvement in patronage could bring to

3 Lady Strafford to Countess of Huntingdon, Stainborough, 11 July 1731, Historical Manuscripts Commission (HMC) Hastings III, p. 7. 4 Countess of Portland to Count Bentinck, Whitehall, 30 April 1742, BL Eg. MS 1716, fols. 2v–3r. 5 Anne, Lady Irwin to Lord Carlisle, London, 16 January [1733], HMC Carlisle, p. 96. 6 Lewis Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III, 2nd ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1957); Robert Walcott, Jr., English Politics in the Early Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956); Geoffrey Holmes, British Politics in the Age of Anne (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1967); J. H. Plumb, The Growth of Political Stability in England 1675–1725 (London: Macmillan, 1967); Clayton Roberts, “Party and Patronage in Later Stuart England,” in England’s Rise to Greatness,1660–1783, ed. Stephen B. Baxter (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). 7 See Susan E. Whyman, Sociability and Power in Late-Stuart England: The Cultural Worlds of the Verneys 1660–1720 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), for a recent discussion of the importance of patronage in one family. 8 Linda Levy Peck, Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990); J. M. Bourne, Patronage and Society in Nineteenth-Century England (London: Edward Arnold, 1986).

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the patron – benefits that Donna Andrew points out applied equally to the female patrons of charitable causes in the late eighteenth century.9 By focusing explicitly on women’s involvement in political patronage and influence, this chapter will explore its implications for ideas about gendered public and private spheres and for the maintenance of aristocratic power in the early eighteenth century. Fortunately, Karl von den Steinen’s lament that historians “must now choose between politics without women or women without politics” no longer applies, in part thanks to his pioneering work.10 Instead, scholars are increasingly aware of “the power of the petticoat,” as one recent collection of essays put it.11 Studies of noblewomen in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries explore the networks of influence and patronage available to them in local as well as national politics.12 Anne Kugler’s study of the more modest life of Lady Sarah Cowper similarly shows her using connections of friendship and family in public affairs.13 For the late eighteenth century, Amanda Foreman’s masterful biography of the Duchess of Devonshire reveals the tension between her famous involvement in the 1784 Westminster election, and her lesser-known, but more successful, behind-the-scenes political activities at the end of her life. 14 And Elaine

9

Donna T. Andrew, “Noblesse Oblige: Female Charity in an Age of Sentiment,” in Early Modern Conceptions of Property, ed. John Brewer and Susan Staves (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 275–300. 10 Karl von den Steinen, “The Discovery of Women in Eighteenth-Century English Political Life,” in The Women of England from Anglo-Saxon Times to the Present: Interpretive Bibliographical Essays, ed. B. Kanner (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1979), pp. 229–58; quotation p. 247, n. 2. 11 Kathryn Gleadle and Sarah Richardson, eds., Women in British Politics, 1760–1860: The Power of the Petticoat (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000). 12 On the sixteenth century, Karen Robertson, “Tracing Women’s Connections from a Letter by Elizabeth Ralegh,” in Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: Women’s Alliances in Early Modern England, ed. Susan Frye and Karen Robertson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 149–64; Barbara J. Harris, “Women and Politics in Early Tudor England,” Historical Journal 33 (1990): 259–81; Barbara A. Hanawalt, “Lady Honor Lisle’s Networks of Influence,” in Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1988), pp. 188–212. On the seventeenth century, Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, Writing Women in Jacobean England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), ch. 4; Lois Schwoerer, Lady Rachel Russell: “One of the Best of Women” (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988); Frances Harris, A Passion for Government: The Life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). 13 Anne Kugler, “Prescription, Culture, and Shaping Identity: Lady Sarah Cowper (1644–1720)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1994), pp. 172–84. 14 Amanda Foreman, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (London: HarperCollins, 1998); Amanda Foreman, “A Politician’s Politician: Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and the Whig Party,” in Gender in Eighteenth-Century England: Roles, Representations and Responsibilities, ed. Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus (New York: Addison Wesley 196

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Chalus argues for the significance of many elite women in politics at both the national and the local level.15 This chapter develops similar arguments for the early eighteenth century, but it seeks also to emphasize the ways in which influence can be distinguished from other, informal activities, in order to draw attention to the degree of acceptance of aristocratic women’s public action. To do so is to move influence closer to the concept of patronage, first by recognizing both as forms of explicitly public power, and second by distinguishing influence from activities such as visiting, which relied for their impact on the fiction that they were strictly personal and private. The sections that follow will examine aristocratic women’s use of influence in different areas, from assisting their social inferiors to electioneering and angling for promotions for themselves and others. I have suggested above, and it will become clear in the rest of this chapter, that influence was seen and accepted as public power. There was no need, when women used their influence to win jobs or political support, to pretend that this was mere sociability or to disguise it through male intervention or feminine disavowal. Influence provided the primary legitimate and accepted means for women of quality to participate in public affairs, and it reflected the most significant way in which status could overcome gender barriers. Women were able to exercise this power during the early modern period because political and social authority among the elite was still largely based on personal relationships between individuals.16 But although influence was personal, it was not private.

Longman, 1997), pp. 179–204. See also Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), ch. 6, especially pp. 242–48, for a different reading of the Duchess’s activities. 15 Elaine Chalus, “‘That Epidemical Madness’: Women and Electoral Politics in the Late Eighteenth Century,” in Barker and Chalus, eds., Gender in Eighteenth-Century England, pp. 151–78; Elaine Chalus, “‘My Minerva at my Elbow’: The Political Roles of Women in Eighteenth-Century England,” in Hanoverian Britain and Empire: Essays in Memory of Philip Lawson, ed. S. Taylor, R. Connors and C. Jones (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1998), pp. 210–28; Elaine Chalus, “Women, Electoral Privilege and Practice in the Eighteenth Century,” in Women in British Politics, 1760–1860: The Power of the Petticoat, ed. K. Gleadle and S. Richardson (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), pp. 19–38; Elaine Chalus, “Elite Women, Social Politics, and the Political World of Late EighteenthCentury England,” Historical Journal 43 (2000): 669–97. See also P. J. Jupp, “The Roles of Royal and Aristocratic Women in British Politics, c. 1782–1832,” in Chattel, Servant or Citizen. Women’s Status in Church, State and Society, ed. M. O’Dowd and S. Wichert, Historical Studies XIX (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1995), pp. 103–13. For the nineteenth century, see K. D. Reynolds, Aristocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). 16 See Whyman, Sociability and Power; Vivienne Larminie, Wealth, Kinship and Culture: The Seventeenth-Century Newdigates of Arbury and Their World (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Royal Historical Society/Boydell Press, 1995), ch. 9; and the works cited above, nn. 11 and 12. Peck, Court Patronage, stresses the differences between Jacobean and early eighteenthcentury patronage, but the fundamentally personal nature of patronage continued. 197

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Thus, unlike the nineteenth century, when politics was at least theoretically marked off as a realm of impersonal service to abstract concepts of state or society, in this period women using influence were not necessarily transgressing gender norms.17 Men and women could wield influence in almost identical ways. It is, perhaps, significant that the eighteenth century saw a struggle to define rigid gender boundaries at the same time that some thinkers began to argue for a new ideal of impersonal state service. The term “influence” requires some explanation. Many scholars have studied the role of patronage in the politics of the eighteenth century, through which political allegiances were bought by the distribution of places in individual or government gift.18 Implicit in much of this work has been the assumption that patronage was inherently corrupt, with a negative impact on the workings of politics. Yet it may be more useful to think of patronage (as well as influence) in terms of the eighteenth century’s lack of a clear distinction between the political and the personal. If, as I have argued throughout this book, the personal was political, then so, too, was the political personal. To say this is not to imply that politics can be reduced simply to factional power struggles among the elite – to embrace the Namierite view. The idea that family alliances determined political allegiances, for instance, breaks down the instant one realizes that virtually all aristocratic families were related to one another by blood or marriage. Ideological differences did matter. But just as there was room for women’s notionally private activities to have widespread public implications, so too could they participate in the personal aspects of public life by wielding influence. Although they rarely held the legal right to distribute places in the technical sense of patronage, they did, by virtue of their economic, social, and court positions, frequently exercise considerable influence in the distribution of political favor. Moreover, this was not the covert activity suggested by, for example, the stereotype of royal mistresses gaining the king’s ear through pillow talk. Nor are these cases of women working for political ends through sociability, as we saw for instance in Lady Strafford’s dealings with Lady Oxford. On the contrary, women’s influence was overtly public and accepted as such. Influence involved the explicit recognition of women’s public power wielded on behalf of themselves, their families, friends, and allies.

Christianity and charity One area in which women’s influence was particularly important was in the realm of clerical appointments. The common association between women

17 Cf. Reynolds, Aristocratic Women and Political Society, who argues that political activity among the Victorian aristocracy perpetuated eighteenth-century practices. 18 See note 6 above.

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and piety, which increased after the Restoration, may even have strengthened women’s role in such matters. Some were true patrons, holding an advowson; more often, women advised their husbands or other men. The Countess of Hertford, for instance, successfully petitioned through her husband on behalf of two ministers, both of whom received preferments.19 Other women sought advancement for their own spouses; in 1754, Lady Anne Sophia Egerton wrote to her uncle asking for his help in getting her husband the bishopric of Llandaff. The place was not yet vacant, unfortunately, but she had heard that the current bishop was dangerously ill.20 A few women were quite powerful figures in the world of ecclesiastical influence in their own right. The famously pious Lady Betty Hastings helped both her own relations and others with clerical preferments – her connections extended all the way to the Archbishop of Canterbury himself – and other women in her circle played similar roles.21 Aristocratic women could be, like Lady Elizabeth Hatton, “pestred sadly with parsons” seeking help in getting places.22 Lady Anne Conolly noted wryly that her husband’s aunt had so much influence over the choice of Irish bishops that within hours of a death among them her house was filled with hopeful clerics.23 Women’s role in such cases could spill over into another significant area of female influence: charity. In 1754, for instance, Lady Luxborough used her influence with William Shenstone and Lord Dudley to try to get “protection,” in the form of a chaplaincy, for a clerical acquaintance who had run into debt.24 Often women employed influence in cases where they had a 19 Countess of Hertford to her mother, [1721], in Helen Sard Hughes, ed., The Gentle Hertford: Her Life and Letters (New York: Macmillan, 1940), p. 64. 20 Lady Anne Sophia Egerton to Count Bentinck, Ross, 19 July 1754, BL Eg. MS 1719, fol. 7r. 21 See Lady Catherine Wheler to [Lady Betty Hastings?], Otterden Place, 25 July 1737, in George Hastings Wheler, ed., Hastings Wheler Family Letters [Part 2], 1704–1739 (Wakefield: West Yorkshire Printing Co. (privately printed), 1935), pp. 150–1; Lady Catherine Wheler to Lady Betty Hastings, Otterden Place, 1 March 1737[/8], in Hastings Wheler, ed., Hastings Wheler Letters, p. 143; Archbishop of Canterbury to Lady Betty Hastings, 5 July 1737, in Hastings Wheler, ed., Hastings Wheler Letters, pp. 149–50; Mary Astell to Lady Ann Coventry, 10 April 1719, quoted in Ruth Perry, The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), p. 386. Queen Caroline was also a major figure in ecclesiastical politics; see Stephen Taylor, “Queen Caroline and the Church of England,” in Taylor, Connors, and Jones, eds., Hanoverian Britain and Empire, pp. 82–101. 22 Lady Elizabeth Hatton to Lord Hatton, [n.d.; 1690s?], BL Add. MS 29576, fol. 445r–445v. 23 Lady Anne Conolly to Lord Strafford, Dublin, 27 November [1735], BL Add. MS 22228, fol. 147v. 24 Lady Luxborough to William Shenstone, Barrells, 27 February 1754, in Letters Written by the Late Right Honourable Lady Luxborough, to William Shenstone, Esq. (London: J. Dodsley, 1775), pp. 376–7; same to same, Barrells, 12 May 1754, in Letters to Shenstone, pp. 387–8.

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particular local interest. The Countess of Nottingham requested her father, the Guernsey-based Viscount Hatton, to help get a wool license for Sarah Church, since Mrs. Church was the niece of a Guernsey Nonconformist minister.25 In 1693 Abigail Harley wrote to her father, Sir Edward, asking him and her brother to assist a local woman in danger of having to pay large fines for operating a mill against someone else’s patent. Abigail also planned to write to another Harley cousin, who was related to the man pursuing the legal action, in hopes of using the pressure of family ties to obtain her ends.26 Such influence was close to women’s traditional role of providing charity through hospitality or care for the local poor, but it also enabled them to make their acts more widely known. Being seen to wield such influence bestowed status on those who exercised it, since it was a public demonstration of an individual’s social power as well as her benevolence. It also publicly represented individual, Christian virtue. Combined with a genuine desire to benefit others, there were thus powerful incentives to use influence for charitable purposes.27 Nor was this kind of charitable influence confined to provincial interests. Margaret Bradshaw, for instance, solicited her fellow courtier the Countess of Suffolk to forward her attempts to help a boy, who was poor but “Quallified as being a gentleman,” win a place in the Charterhouse, which was in the royal gift.28 A prominent figure like the Duchess of Marlborough was, of course, flooded with requests for assistance. The Countess of Portland was one of many who wrote to ask for her help in getting a “distrest” woman a royal pension, and such requests continued even after the Duchess’s fall from favor.29 A few years later, Lady Talbot solicited Charlotte Clayton – a later royal favorite – for help in making sure that a pension owed to a military widow was paid. The £100 annual pension had been granted by the late queen, said Lady Talbot, but the late Ministry, we all know, were such real friends to the landed interest, that they parted with money to none but to those that were possessed of many acres, from which proceeding she was near three years without receiving one penny . . . I am sure she would be truly thankful for the payment of the last halfyear. Could you, Madam, be the author of this good, either by your interest with Mr. Clayton, or by engaging the Princess, whose ears I am told are always open to the cries of the distressed, to represent these facts to the King, or by any other method you shall judge proper, it would be a worthy act of charity done to one of

25

Countess of Nottingham to Lord Hatton, Berkshire House, 4 January [1689/90?], BL Add. MS 29596, fol. 48. 26 Abigail Harley to Sir Edward Harley, 28 December 1693, BL Add. MS 70116. 27 Andrew, “Noblesse Oblige,” p. 280. 28 Margaret Bradshaw to Countess of Suffolk, [n.d.], BL Add. MS 22627, fol. 117r–117v. 29 Countess of Portland to Duchess of Marlborough, Sorgvliet, 8/19 June [n.y.], BL Add. MS 61456, fol. 179. 200

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the most valuable women I ever knew; but I should be unjust to her, if I failed telling you that she hath ever been a steady Whig, and had the courage to avow her principles during the late administration, though her bread was endangered by it.30

This petition exemplifies many of the characteristics of charitable influence. Although it is phrased in terms of helping a “distressed” widow – the classic case of the deserving poor – it highlights the political stakes behind much of this sort of charity. The widow was deserving, in part at least, because she was “a steady Whig” and had reportedly been the victim of Tory bigotry. It also shows the way in which influence frequently operated through networks; Lady Talbot solicited help from Mrs. Clayton, hoping that she in turn would get the assistance of her husband or the Princess of Wales to pass the request on to the King. For aristocratic women, using influence for such charitable purposes served several ends. It enabled them not only to exercise but to proclaim their Christian virtues, and it also reinforced their own claims to high status by demonstrating their public power with concrete results. Lady Talbot’s insistence on the solid Whig principles of her military widow, similarly, gave her the chance to remind her audience of her own political allegiance. The power dynamics inherent in the use of influence become especially clear when we see a woman exploiting her influence in more obviously selfinterested ways. The Countess of Portland frequently accepted favors from people who hoped she would later use her influence on their behalf. Despite their hopes for reciprocity, she noted, doing so “engages me . . . no furthere than I please.”31 Helping others, or being seen to have the power to help others, was one way for women to proclaim their status and to exercise real power.

Influence at court Using influence to help clergymen or social inferiors could fit fairly easily into women’s traditional associations with piety and charity. But women of quality also exercised more obviously political influence, particularly at court. Court places were highly sought after by women as well as men. In 1760, for instance, Lady Anne Sophia Egerton sent an urgent letter to her brother: 30

Lady Cecil Talbot to Mrs. Clayton, Bloomsbury, 6 March [n.y.], in Mrs. Thomson, ed., Memoirs of Viscountess Sundon, Mistress of the Robes to Queen Caroline, Consort of George II.; Including Letters from the Most Celebrated Persons of Her Time, 2 vols. (London: Henry Colburn, 1847), 1: 385–6. 31 Countess of Portland to Count Bentinck, Whitehall, 20 February [n.y.], BL Eg. MS 1715, fol. 20v. 201

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Some peculiarities in my situation, & the great Object at Stake, force me to be daring, and wish that it may not interfere with your Convenience to write immediately a pressing letter to The Duke or Dutchess of Portland to honour me – with a recommendation to Lord & Lady Bute to be Chose among the Ladies of the Bedchamber whenever there shall be a new Queen. . . . Dear Sir if you grant my petition, pray let me know it, by the same Post that you write to The Duke and Dutchess of Portland, that I may fling myself in their way & urge a request, I dare not offer from myself.32

Some historians have argued, however, that women’s opportunity to participate in political affairs declined after the Civil War, due to the combination of factors such as poor education and the lack of salons or an equivalent forum in which to discuss politics. Women no longer had any chance of voting or holding political or administrative offices in government, to which they had had at least some access earlier.33 The role of women at court has similarly been subject to conflicting interpretations. Two significant studies of early eighteenth-century courts – John Beattie’s on the reign of George I, and R. O. Bucholz’s on Queen Anne – provide comprehensive examinations of the workings of the court in many aspects, from daily administration to cultural life.34 But where Beattie insists that “the court was still a most important political institution in the early eighteenth century,”35 Bucholz presents a picture of declining significance as the elite’s attention increasingly shifted away from the court to London and Parliament. Bucholz pays particular attention to the significance of gender and the opportunities available to women at court, opportunities that reached unusual heights under the reign of a queen. Beattie, on the other hand, sees little or no role for women at court. Yet both scholars tend to underestimate the continued value placed by elite society on court posts, and the opportunities for women even under a male monarch; during the Georgian period, there was almost always a princess of Wales and often a queen who required female servants. Just as participation in London’s cosmopolitan culture became increasingly important during the early eighteenth century, so too did influence over 32 Lady Anne Sophia Egerton to Count Bentinck, 20 November 1760, BL Eg. MS 1719, fol. 160v. The Duke and Duchess of Portland represented the senior branch of the Bentinck family, related through Count Bentinck’s father and his first wife. 33 Schwoerer, “Women and the Glorious Revolution,” pp. 197–8. On women trying (but failing) to vote during the Civil War, see Antonia Fraser, The Weaker Vessel (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), pp. 230–1. 34 John M. Beattie, The English Court in the Reign of George I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967); R. O. Bucholz, The Augustan Court: Queen Anne and the Decline of Court Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993); R. O. Bucholz, “‘Nothing but Ceremony’: Queen Anne and the Limitations of Royal Ritual,” Journal of British Studies 30 (1991): 288–323. 35 Beattie, English Court, p. 278.

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national rather than local affairs. Nationally-based political influence never replaced the use of influence on behalf of social inferiors, but it did enable some women to participate directly in public affairs at the highest level. The court was an essential venue for the exercise of such influence, both because women held official positions there as they could not do elsewhere, and because the court provided much room for the exercise of influence and patronage through the many places it provided. The Civil List contained political and diplomatic posts as well as those strictly relating to the monarch’s household and person – a situation that reflected the ambiguous nature of service to the monarch.36 Court places depended on the will of the monarch, the patronage power of the individual in whose gift such places lay, and other considerations such as a desire on the part of the patron to please another powerful figure by the appointment. Court posts reflected elite status, conferring prestige on those who held them.37 Moreover, court places, especially bedchamber and “backstairs” posts, were highly valued for providing access to the monarch and information about political trends. On rare occasions these posts could even propel their female holders into the political spotlight. As witnesses to the birth of the Prince of Wales in 1688, for instance, Lady Isabella Wentworth and other waiting-women publicly testified to its authenticity. This testimony was printed, and years later the famous nonjuror divine, George Hickes, interviewed Lady Wentworth about the birth.38 Court places were inherently political. The significance of women’s court posts was obvious during the reign of a female monarch, like Anne, but even under male rule, royal women and their attendants were important. The influence of Queen Caroline over George II was widely acknowledged by contemporaries. On one typical occasion, Lady Irwin reported to her father that the King and Robert Walpole “have had a quarrel, which run high, but by the Qu—n[’s] management ’tis all made up.”39 The Hanoverian era saw an especially strong politicization of court posts because of the frequent conflicts between the reigning King and his heir; rifts between King and Prince often reflected divisions between ruling and opposition parties. During these conflicts, bedchamber posts became weapons; Lady Irwin, for instance, was appointed to the bedchamber of the new Princess of Wales by the Queen, without the Prince’s consent. She admitted that this made her task difficult, but she was grateful for the advice

36

Beattie, English Court, p. 110. ibid., pp. 137, 139–52, 168, and ch. 7 passim; Bucholz, Augustan Court, pp. 133, 150, 154, 188, 221. 38 At the Council-Chamber in Whitehall, Monday the 22. of October, 1688 (London: Charles Bill, H. Hills, and Th. Newcomb, 1688); Rachel Weil, Political Passions: Gender, the Family and Political Argument in England, 1680–1714 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), ch. 3; James J. Cartwright, ed., The Wentworth Papers 1705–1739 (London: Wyman & Sons, 1883), pp. 543–4. 39 Lady Irwin to Lord Carlisle, London, 1 April [1733?], HMC Carlisle, p. 106. 37

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and help of Sir Robert Walpole.40 Wives of political officials were frequently the recipients of court posts, rising and falling along with their husbands. In 1737, for instance, during a quarrel between the King and Prince, Lady Irwin reported that two of the Princess’s attendants resigned their posts because of their husbands’ political views. Lords Effingham and Torrington, “who, both having such great employments from the Court, and apprehending the disagreeable votes that would happen this Sessions [sic], were determined, as they should vote with the Court, not to have their Ladies engaged on the other side.”41 Women’s court places, no less than men’s, held a political significance that was widely recognized. This section will sketch out the role of a few female courtiers in order to trace the significance as well as the limitations of their influence. Most extensive in her use of influence as a courtier was Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, during her time as Queen Anne’s favorite. She was widely solicited for political places and other forms of influence. The question of just how much power she wielded has been debated in recent scholarship, which has shown both the Duchess’s belief in her own power and the real limits of her authority. Anne was largely unwilling to listen to Sarah’s frequent political harangues, instead attempting to force the conversation toward “common questions about the linings of mantoes, & the weather,” the trivial topics seen as suitable for feminine conversation, and thus the very opposite of the Duchess’s interests. From Sarah’s viewpoint, in contrast, her position as a courtier and as Anne’s friend gave her the right to offer advice and opinions freely, a stance that she deliberately opposed to the scheming of flatterers. In a 1710 letter to Countess Cowper, when she was out of favor, she contrasted her own upright behavior with the nefarious influence of Abigail Masham, but she also recognized the limits of her political power. She hoped that the men with “the chief influence att court” would use it well: “in things of that nature tis a simple [i.e. silly] thing for a woman to imagin she can doe any good, & yet I am sure there was a time, that I did servise to those that are in the honest interest.” Her effect on government ministers’ policy was not very great, even when that ministry included her own husband. On the other hand, she was invaluable in acting as a buffer between Queen Anne and the many people who sought court patronage, and, as with other courtiers, being seen to be so close to the center of political power itself conferred great power in relation to those who hoped for her influence on their behalf.42 Women who were perceived to be particularly close to a monarch were especially sought after for their influence. Much of the surviving corre40

Lady Irwin to Lord Carlisle, 4 May [1736], HMC Carlisle, pp. 171–2. Lady Irwin to Lord Carlisle, 11 October [1737], HMC Carlisle, p. 187. 42 This paragraph is based primarily on Harris, Passion for Government; quotations from pp. 110, 171. Bucholz deals with the extent of Sarah’s power as well as its limits: Augustan Court, pp. 68–9, 74–80, 156–63. See Beattie, English Court, p. 158, on the influence of the Churchill family generally. 41

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spondence of Charlotte Clayton, another royal favorite, consists of letters soliciting favors. “May it not be too great a presumption in me to beg that I may be represented to your gracious mistress by you, as one of the most faithful servants of their royal family,” wrote the Bishop of Oxford soon after Charlotte’s appointment to Queen Caroline’s household.43 Hearing that Caroline was about to add some new Ladies of the Bedchamber to her household, Viscountess Falmouth immediately pressed Mrs. Clayton to put her name forward to the Queen. Her grounds for doing so show the importance given to these household offices; she cited the vast obligation it would be to Lord Falmouth, and if he could be happy enough to go into the country with this mark of favour, it would be such a countenance to his interest at the next Elections, that I may without vanity say, that there is not one subject in England that can do half the service.44

When Mary, Countess Cowper, joined the new court in 1714 as Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess of Wales, she soon faced high expectations from her extended family. Her aunt and uncle, for instance, resented her for not finding them each a government post. “Lord how people judge of their own meritt,” she complained in her diary, “how little should I expect 3 places from the interest of any one body.”45 Lady Cowper’s annoyance reflected the real limitations on female courtiers’ power; she did not have any places officially in her gift and thus could not provide true patronage. But she also revealed the expectations surrounding women courtiers as potential sources of influence and place, expectations that not only reflected the very real power many courtiers exercised, but also the way in which the perception of power itself conferred power. Moreover, she did wield important influence through her early friendship with Baron Bernstorff, one of George I’s close German advisors. She passed on to Bernstorff information about meetings of the English cabinet, and he in turn promoted the Cowpers’ candidates for civil and ecclesiastical offices.46 The experience of Henrietta Howard, mistress of George II, as well as a courtier serving his wife, similarly reflected the possibilities created by the mere perception of power.47 Some contemporaries reported that she wielded little actual influence over the King, and indeed she was known as “the Swiss”

43 Bishop of Oxford to Mrs. Clayton, [r. George I], in Thomson, ed., Sundon Memoirs, 1: 66–7. 44 Viscountess Falmouth to Mrs. Clayton, 1 July [n.y.], in Thomson, ed., Sundon Memoirs, 1: 317–18. 45 Countess Cowper, diary entry, 14 December 1714, HRO D/EP F205. See also Countess Cowper to Grace Clavering Richards, [c. March 1716/17], HRO D/EP F197. 46 Beattie, English Court, pp. 145, 145 n. 6, 223. 47 She was a Bedchamber Woman until her husband inherited the title of Earl of Suffolk in 1731, at which point she had to be promoted and was made Mistress of the Robes.

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for her ostentatious political neutrality at court. Some hostile reports even mocked her on the grounds that “a mistress who could not get power was not a much more agreeable or respectable character than a minister who could not keep it.”48 According to Horace Walpole, she could at most request money for charitable cases from the King, who would “give her little pensions of 30 or 40 guineas a year, out of his own pocket, but insist on her not letting it be known.”49 But Mrs. Howard also gained respect and prestige through her position. Because of her post she had Queen Caroline’s ear, and could be used by others to solicit help, as when Lady Bristol asked her to intercede on behalf of her son when he was out of the Princess’s favor.50 Similarly, in 1727 Lady Chetwynd wrote asking for Henrietta’s influence in getting the royal couple to help Lord Chetwynd, who had been dropped from the royal service upon George II’s accession. Lady Chetwynd hoped for “some mark of their Royall favour, to convince Mankind here, we are not in the utmost disgrace.”51 Her request revealed not only her sense of Henrietta’s authority, but also the importance she recognized of being seen to be in the “Royall favour.” The potential profit of such influence could be great in the form of bribes as well, judging from Harriet Pitt’s offer in 1722 of a thousand guineas “to dispose of to whoever is proper” in order to have her brother Lord Grandison appointed a Gentleman of the Bedchamber.52 Despite Mrs. Howard’s apparent lack of actual political influence over George II, she was still widely perceived as someone worth soliciting for assistance. Moreover, at least two of her contemporaries, with quite differing opinions of her, believed that her eventual dismissal from court was the result of her political views.53 It is, of

48

Romney Sedgwick, ed., Lord Hervey’s Memoirs: Edited from a Copy of the Original Manuscript in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle (London: William Kimber, 1952), p. 40, and see pp. 43–4; Lewis Melville, Lady Suffolk and her Circle (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1924), pp. 75, 177; Countess Cowper, diary entry, [c. July–August 1716], HRO D/EP F205; Horace Walpole, Memoirs of King George II, ed. J. Brooke, 3 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 1: 118. 49 Walpole, Memoirs of George II, 1: 116 n. 7. 50 Lady Bristol to Henrietta Howard, [n.d.], BL Add. MS 22629, fol. 130. 51 Lady Mary Chetwynd to Henrietta Howard, Ingestry, 29 July [1727], BL Add. MS 22627, fol. 79v. 52 Harriet Villiers Pitt to Henrietta Howard, [November 1722], in J. W. Croker, ed., Letters to and from Henrietta, Countess of Suffolk, and her Second Husband, the Hon. George Berkeley; from 1712 to 1767, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1824), 1: 101–2. I have been unable to locate the original letter or Henrietta’s response, but Harriet Pitt was clearly rebuffed; she wrote an embarrassed letter denying any attempt to bribe a royal servant and insisting that she had heard only that “a present was usually made on such occasions”: same to same, [n.d.], BL Add. MS 22629, fol. 13v–14r. On bribery at court, see Beattie, English Court, p. 164. 53 Lord Egmont, diary entry, 16 November 1734, HMC Egmont Diary II, pp. 133–4; Walpole, Memoirs of George II, 1: 118 n. 1. 206

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course, impossible to tell whether those who sought her help did so because of her status as royal mistress or because of her official court position and connections to Queen Caroline. Because she was never publicly acknowledged as a mistress, and because she officially served George’s wife, those who sought her favor did not explicitly refer to possible sexual leverage, if that indeed was the reason they believed her powerful. But as the examples of the Duchess of Marlborough, Mrs. Clayton, and Lady Cowper show, female courtiers did not have to be mistresses to be seen to wield influence. The experience of Isabella Arundell reveals not only the value placed on the court but also its actual mechanics. Having been a Maid of Honour and having received the traditional dowry of £3000 from the Queen, she was already a direct beneficiary of one aspect of court service.54 After her marriage, Mrs. Arundell continued to depend entirely on court favor for her family’s financial success, intentionally spending most of her time in the metropolis so as to be near the center of patronage.55 Her husband was perpetually in debt, and when he died in December 1712 she was left in danger of having her goods seized by the bailiffs. But she was rescued by her friendship with Abigail Masham, then Queen Anne’s favorite. Immediately after Mr. Arundell’s death, both her mother and her sister-in-law, the Countess of Strafford, wrote to Lady Masham requesting her to give Mr. Arundell’s place (and thus its income) to his son even though he was still a minor – a request that was granted.56 Then in January 1713, her mother, Lady Wentworth, reported that Lady Masham had sent Isabella fifty guineas from the Queen, with the reassurance that Lady Masham had spoken on her behalf

54 History of the Wentworth family, BL Add. MS 22230, fol. 5. Duchess of Marlborough to Lady Frances Bathurst, 28 March 1703, HMC Bathurst, p. 4; same to same, 2 April [1703], HMC Bathurst, p. 5. Isabella’s brother clearly did not think this dowry large enough, since these two letters are polite rebuffs to Lady Bathurst’s request, on his behalf, for a bigger contribution from the Queen. The use of the Duchess and Lady Bathurst as gobetweens in the affair itself illustrates the importance of places at court and female influence. 55 On Mrs. Arundell’s hopes for a court place for herself or her husband, see, e.g., Lady Wentworth to Lord Raby (later Earl of Strafford), 3 December [1708], BL Add. MS 31143, fols. 239v–240r; same to same, 3 June [1709], BL Add. MS 31143, fol. 369v; same to same, 24 June [1709], BL Add. MS 31143, fol. 397; Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 25 December 1711, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 52. On the importance of attendance at court in order to reap the benefits of patronage, see Beattie, English Court, pp. 161–2. 56 Lady Strafford to Lord Strafford, St. James’s Square, 5 December 1712, BL Add. MS 22226, fol. 239; Lady Wentworth to Lord Strafford, 5 December [1712], BL Add. MS 22225, fols. 192v–193r; Isabella Arundell to Lord Strafford, 20 February [1712/13], BL Add. MS 31144, fol. 343. See also Lord Masham to Earl of Oxford, [early 1713], BL Add. MS 70290: “my Wife has had an Account of Poor Mr Arundell’s being dead of the small Pox, with letters both from my Lady Wentworth and Lady Strafford, begging his Son may succceed him in his Employment, my Wife desires her humble Service to you and begs you will consider the deplorable condition of the Widdow and Children.”

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to Lord Treasurer Oxford.57 The following March, Mrs. Arundell’s house was surrounded by bailiffs, but she received protection from Lady Masham; and a few days later Lady Wentworth heard with relief that Queen Anne had sent via Lady Masham to find out what Isabella’s debts amounted to, in order to help pay them off.58 Above all, the family hoped that Mrs. Arundell would be granted a post as Bedchamber Woman to the Queen, and Lady Wentworth provided running updates on their prospects. In April she could at last announce with joy that Isabella had been given the post: “I am hartely Glad of it . . . now she will be throughout happy. She will have near fowerteen hundred [pounds] a year & Lodgins, & in her power to doe somthing for her Children.”59 As Isabella assured her brother, “I will do my Dutty as my place requires, with thankfullnes to God & the Queen how [i.e. who] has restord me from misery.”60 Not only does this case reveal the value placed on court positions as a means of subsistence – Mrs. Arundell clearly saw court connections as her sole potential source of income – but it also shows the extent and variety of court influence. Lady Masham, of course, was crucial in obtaining the Bedchamber post. She also provided immediate material support in the form of gifts of money from the Queen, as well as security in protecting Isabella from the bailiffs. In all these cases, such power was immediate and public; there was no disguise of Lady Masham’s influence as a form of sociability, for instance. Yet this power was also personal, in the same way that much political power in the early eighteenth century was personal. It was based on individual acquaintance and recommendations, through a system of mutual regard and the obligations of honor.

Influence and politics beyond the court Just as women could rely on influence to obtain sought-after court places, so too did they turn to influence for other government posts even though they were not themselves qualified to hold these offices – as with Anne Pye’s

57

Lady Wentworth to Lord Strafford, 17 March [1713], BL Add. MS 22225, fol. 393v; same to same, 20 January [1713], BL Add. MS 22225, fols. 349v–350r. Oxford was also Lady Masham’s cousin. 58 Lady Wentworth to Lord Strafford, 27 March [1713], BL Add. MS 22225, fol. 253r. 59 Lady Wentworth to Lord Strafford, 7 April [1713], BL Add. MS 22225, fol. 262r–262v. See same to same, 9 January [1713], BL Add. MS 22225, fol. 342v; same to same, 31 March [1713], BL Add. MS 22225, fol. 256v; same to same, 4 April [1713], BL Add. MS 22225, fol. 360. 60 Isabella Arundell to Lord Strafford, [October? 1713], BL Add. MS 22228, fol. 5. Despite the optimism of Lady Wentworth and her daughter, Mrs. Arundell’s post lasted only until Anne’s death in 1714. For a brief discussion of these events that minimizes the significance of court appointments, see Bucholz, English Court, pp. 139–40. 208

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request on behalf of her brother-in-law for the customs job. The Countess of Hertford turned in 1743 to her friend and relation, Lady Carteret, for help in getting a place for her cousin. “I took the opportunity of my Lady Carteret’s going to Hanover to write and wish her a safe journey,” Lady Hertford told her son, “and at the same time to repeat my solicitations for poor Jem, which I did with the warmth of a friend, and placed the reality of my Lord Carteret’s professions of friendship to us entirely on the performance of his promise to us upon his account.” Her attempts were unsuccessful because, she feared, “this was too audacious a manner of addressing the Lady of a Prime Minister.”61 Yet even if she pushed too hard in this case, her actions relied on the widely accepted connections between personal friendship and public influence. Lady Irwin similarly took advantage of her connections with the Prince of Wales and the Walpoles to lobby for a government place for her brother.62 Both William Bentinck’s mother and his niece used their connections to Admiral Anson’s wife in order to promote the naval career of Bentinck’s son.63 Similarly, Bentinck’s niece lobbied hard for army promotions for her brotherin-law, Charles Egerton.64 In other cases, aristocratic women’s influence took the form of campaigning for candidates during elections. Often they did so on behalf of family members, though family ties could not always determine political allegiances. In the early 1700s, for example, Lady Elizabeth Hatton was caught up in competing electioneering in Rutland with her son-in-law and stepdaughter, the Earl and Countess of Nottingham. Lady Hatton complained that despite her orders to her dependants to vote for one Mr. Halford, the Nottinghams had been soliciting votes from these same people for another man. She was furious “to have both my Lord & Lady Nottingham contradict me in the person I had desined my cousin Haslewood & James to vote for & order them to give their vote for my Lord Sherard, & they did doe soe too; the later has been with me & tells me he was soe frightened he did not know what he did & beggs my pardon.”65 The Countess of Lincoln solicited her brother, the 61

Countess of Hertford to her son, Percy Lodge, 22 April 1743, in Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, pp. 252–3. See same to same, 1 May 1743, in Hughes, ed., Gentle Hertford, p. 255. 62 Lady Irwin to Lord Carlisle, [Paris, c. June–Sept 1730], HMC Carlisle, p. 77. 63 Countess of Portland to Count Bentinck, Whitehall, 22 January 1750/1, BL Eg. MS 1716, fol. 260; Lady Anne Sophia Egerton to Count Bentinck, 3 June 1760, BL Eg. MS 1719, fol. 133. 64 Lady Anne Sophia Egerton to Count Bentinck, Whitehall, 8 May [1759], BL Eg. MS 1719, fols. 42v–43r; same to same, 28 May [1759], BL Eg. MS 1719, fol. 52; same to same, 27 June [1759], BL Eg. MS 1719, fol. 58; same to same, 6 August 1759, BL Eg. MS 1719, fol. 65; same to same, 3 June 1760, BL Eg. MS 1719, fols. 134v–135r; same to same, 2 August 1760, BL Eg. MS 1719, fol. 146. Charles was also her cousin, since she married his brother, her first cousin. 65 Lady Elizabeth Hatton to Viscount Hatton, 11 September [after 1706], BL Add. MS 29576, fol. 356r–356v. See same to same, Northampton, 3 September [after 1706], BL Add. MS 29576, fols. 348v–349r; same to same, 17 September [after 1706], BL Add. MS 29576, fol. 357. 209

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Duke of Newcastle, to provide a parliamentary seat for her brother-in-law; when that attempt failed, she hoped he might be able to get a government place. If “only mony was necessary for him to be chose, I might my self assist him in the expence, which would be a Satisfaction to me,” she added.66 On one of the many occasions when she made suggestions to her husband about his political career, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu lamented, “Tis too late to mention it now, but you might have apply’d to Lady Winchester, as Sir Joseph Jekyl did last year, and by her Interest the D[uke] of Bolton brought him in for nothing. I am sure she would be more zealous to serve me than Lady Jekyl.”67 Elizabeth Coke similarly described the role of several women when her brother was standing for Parliament against their brother-in-law: “My Lady Bellamont divides her interest now between Mr. Clarke and you. Mrs. Cavendish I hear says, notwithstanding her son’s proceedings, when she finds you come down [from London], hers shall be yours. And Mrs. Gray I believe inclines much to you.”68 She was equally hopeful that she had persuaded another woman to intervene with her husband and make him change his mind.69 Although this sort of family activity was common, it was not essential for women to have kinship ties to the candidates or causes they supported. In 1753 William Shenstone wrote to Lady Luxborough to request her support for the local Whig parliamentary candidate. Although she initially replied that she lived as retired as a “Hermitess” and thus knew nothing about the political scene, she went on to find out the names of all the local voters and to promise that both she and the parson would “use our interest” on the candidate’s behalf, as well as to solicit further support from the local landed elite.70 In July 1753, Catherine Talbot bought herself some green ribbon “for the sake of the loyal Party,” and “did by a little exhortation occasion much Bell ringing & many green Cockades.”71 She worried that others would disapprove of these actions, but her sense of political allegiance won out over her fears of impropriety. And in fact she received no criticism. In 1758 the more powerful and secure Ann Pitt arranged for celebrations for the victory at Louisbourg: 66 Countess of Lincoln to Duke of Newcastle, Vigan, 2 September [1733] O.S., BL Add. MS 33064, fol. 467; same to same, Vigan, 7 October 1733 O.S., BL Add. MS 33064, fol. 473. 67 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Edward Wortley, [c. 23 October 1714], in Robert Halsband, ed., The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965–7), 1: 233. 68 Elizabeth Coke to Vice Chamberlain Thomas Coke, 30 August 1710, HMC Cowper III, p. 95. 69 Elizabeth Coke to Thomas Coke, 11 September 1710, HMC Cowper III, pp. 97–98. 70 William Shenstone to Lady Luxborough, 18 September 1753, BL Add. MS 28958, fol. 147; Lady Luxborough to Shenstone, 18 September 1753, in Letters to Shenstone, pp. 349–50; same to same, Barrells, 27 September 1753, in Letters to Shenstone, pp. 350–1. 71 Catherine Talbot, journal entry, 14 July [1753], BL Add. MS 46690, fol. 85v; Catherine Talbot, 17 July [1753], BL Add. MS 46690, fol. 88.

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as my Brother [William Pitt the elder] has a great many friends at the Bath I employ’d one to ask Mr Mayor if he wou’d aprove of my indulgeing myself in doing what little I cou’d do to add to the publick rejoicings for the success of his Majestys Arms, he sent me word he shou’d take it as a compliment, so I order’d a Bonfire so placed as to be sure no bonfire ever was for the beauty, upon a rising ground before the circus, (where my Brothers House is) 10 Hogsheads of strong beer round it which drew all the Company I cou’d desire, and enabled them to sing God bless Great George our King with very good success with the help of all the musick I cou’d get in the Circus, the whole Town was illuminated, which as it is the prettiest in the World was the gayest thing I ever saw.72

Ann took advantage of her relation to William in order to get permission for the bonfire, but by arranging for the celebrations herself as well as paying for them, she demonstrated not only her patriotism but also her status. Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough represents the extreme case of political involvement on the part of a woman who, by her own admission, had “a passion for government.”73 But her correspondence reveals that many other women were similarly active. In 1712, for instance, Jael Boscawen informed her that Jael’s daughter had been lobbying Sir Thomas Powis for his support for the Duke of Marlborough in an upcoming parliamentary debate.74 Sarah’s political enemies were just as aggressive. On one occasion the Duchess noted that “my Lady Bristol bragged mightily how many votes she had got for the Duke of Dorset. I wish he had nothing to serve him better than her interest,” she added, “for she is a mighty ridiculous woman, entirely wicked in all things.”75 Sarah simply assumed that it was her prerogative to determine her family’s political allegiances. Refusing to permit her son to stand in the 1732 election outside her own pocket borough of Woodstock, for instance, she argued that “if He stands at Woodstock, He is sure to succeed. And in a handsome way, as my Son and Heir. Where He has a Natural Call or Right (I think I may say) to be Chose.”76 If her family defied her, she was irate. When her grandson joined her political enemies, one observer wrote with

72

Ann Pitt to Countess of Suffolk, Bristol, 26 August [1758], BL Add. MS 22629, fol. 79r–79v. 73 See Harris, Passion for Government. 74 Jael Boscawen to Duchess of Marlborough, 22 January [1712], BL Add. MS 61441, fol. 110. 75 Duchess of Marlborough to Duchess of Bedford, Tunbridge Wells, 24 August 1733, in Gladys Scott Thomson, ed. Letters of a Grandmother 1732–1735: Being the Correspondence of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough with her Granddaughter Diana, Duchess of Bedford (London: Jonathan Cape, 1943), pp. 92–3. 76 Duchess of Marlborough to Duchess of Bedford, Marlborough House, 5 December 1732, BL Add. MS 61448, fol. 77r. See also Duchess of Marlborough to Duke of Bedford, Marlborough House, 10 March 1737/8, BL Add. MS 61448, fol. 190v, regarding her continued resentment about the election. See Harris, Passion for Government, pp. 290, 299, regarding this election and that of 1734. 211

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amusement that “the Duchess . . . is in so high wrath with him madam, as to say she hopes they [sic] Spaniards will cut off his ears as they [have] done some of our English merchant ships’ officers.”77 A great estate owner in her own right, she also believed she should determine the votes of her tenants, as she tried to do at St. Albans in 1705, when she supported Henry Killigrew. Not only did she have her agents work against the rival candidate, but she herself went to St. Albans to lobby for Killigrew. He lost the election, and the Tories made much of her attempted interference.78 Yet she clearly believed that her political and economic power gave her the right to act in these affairs, and she was completely unselfconscious about using this power for the political purposes in which she believed. On another occasion, she remarked, “Having a very great estate in my own power I have writ to all my tenants and people that they would not engage to promise anybody their votes till ’tis seen what members will offer. And then I shall desire of them to give all my interest to such as have the best characters and the best estates.”79 The attacks she suffered revealed the tension in this convergence of issues involving gender, political allegiances, and social power. While women could not vote in parliamentary elections, they did often have votes as shareholders in investment schemes, which, as Susan Staves has recently argued, were highly politicized.80 Once again, the Duchess of Marlborough was especially eager to use her influence. On one spectacular occasion, she reportedly bribed the electors to the Governors of the Bank of England to choose the candidates she wanted; when that failed to produce an entirely Whig slate, she had a list of the candidates’ names brought to her while she was attending an opera and simply removed the ones she

77 Lady Catherine Wheler to Lady Betty Hastings, 4 April [1738], in Hastings Wheler, ed., Hastings Wheler Letters, p. 160. Sarah responded to this betrayal by evicting her grandson, the third Duke, from Marlborough House and Windsor Lodge, and by launching a suit in Chancery over the management of her husband’s trust. Harris, Passion for Government, pp. 322–8. 78 Harris, Passion for Government, pp. 117, 121. 79 Duchess of Marlborough to Dr. Sandby, Tunbridge Wells, 26 August 1733, in Maud Wyndham, Chronicles of the Eighteenth Century: Founded on the Correspondence of Sir Thomas Lyttelton and his Family, 2 vols. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1924), 1: 33–4. 80 Susan Staves, “Investments, Votes, and ‘Bribes’: Women as Shareholders in the Chartered National Companies,” in Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition, ed. H. L. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 259–78. Henrietta Howard, for instance, was given stock in the South Sea Company and the Bank of England by the Prince of Wales in 1723: NRO MS 22955 Z76 (Hobart). On women’s investment in such mixed portfolios and its economic impact, see Whyman, Sociability and Power, pp. 76–8; Catherine Ingrassia, Authorship, Commerce, and Gender in Early Eighteenth-Century England: A Culture of Paper Credit (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), ch. 1; Rosemary O’Day, The Family and Family Relationships, 1500–1900: England, France and the United States of America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), p. 145.

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disliked.81 Even if the story was untrue, it shows the power her contemporaries believed she wielded; and Sarah clearly understood her investment decisions in political terms. Not without reason – the South Sea Company was established by the Tories in a deliberate attempt to provide an alternative for government borrowing to the Whig Bank of England. For the Duchess, at least, its partisan implications were so important as to make her refrain from investing in the Company until it came under Hanoverian domination in 1714. Even then, she remained loyal to the Bank (and its directors, who were friends of the Marlboroughs) and avoided the investment frenzy of 1720. Her decision reflected not only her financial acumen – by selling all their holdings in the Company just before the stock peaked she earned herself and her husband a profit of £100,000 – but also her sense of the interaction of political and economic affairs.82 Women who did not manage such tremendous profits could still view their involvement in such companies as having political significance. When the Countess of Portland voted for Sir John Eyles as sub-governor of the South Sea Company, she insisted that she did it “personally for him, without making my compliment to the Court, which thoss that vote for him are lookt on to do.” In voting for Eyles, however, she was voting for an entire Company policy, since he was the head of one of two sharply opposed factions who were battling for control over the Company’s direction.83 And on other occasions she was perfectly willing to avow the political purpose behind her financial decisions. In 1750 she announced that she had subscribed to a reduction in the interest on her government annuities, “& tho it had been never so Large, should have done it, for I never grudge, any mony askt of me, for the support of the Government, & keeping up its creditt.” In her opinion, those who were unwilling to subscribe to the reduction were unpatriotic.84 Exercising their votes gave women like her a real and acknowledged public voice.

Influence and femininity Despite aristocratic women’s widespread involvement in public affairs through the exploitation of influence, such activities continued to exist in uneasy tension with ideals of femininity that demanded women’s total 81

P. L. [Arabella Pulteney?] to Mr. [John?] Molesworth, [c. 1710], HMC Var. Coll. VIII, p. 250. 82 Harris, Passion for Government, pp. 227–8. 83 Countess of Portland to Count Bentinck, Whitehall, 3 February [1729/30], BL Eg. MS 1715, fol. 11r–11v. For the conflict within the Company between Eyles and his opponents, led by Sir Richard Hopkins, see John G. Sperling, The South Sea Company: An Historical Essay and Bibliographical Finding List (Boston: Baker Library, Harvard School of Business Administration, 1962), pp. 43–4. 84 Countess of Portland to Count Bentinck, Whitehall, 12 January [1749/50], BL Eg. MS 1716, fol. 178. See same to same, 5 January 1749/50, BL Eg. MS 1716, fol. 175. 213

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exclusion from the public realm. As Robert Bucholz has shown, Queen Anne’s successive favorites, like the Queen herself, were often deeply conservative in their views of gender roles and allowed this traditionalism to affect their use of influence, frequently sacrificing political opportunities in order to attend to their family responsibilities.85 In her study of female charity in the late eighteenth century, Donna Andrew argues that that period saw the growth of a new “language of sensibility” in appeals for charitable patronage.86 It is possible that this change reflected the impact of ideals of femininity on the use of influence over the course of the eighteenth century. Even before the period discussed by Andrew, aristocratic women sometimes felt the need to phrase their requests for assistance in terms of traditional feminine submission, showing that they recognized the ideological weight of feminine qualities. Thus, when in 1689 Lady Sarah Cowper sought the approval of the Marquess of Halifax, then Lord Privy Seal, for her son to be King’s Counsel, she asked him to excuse her “mother’s impertinence. Nothing but the ease and content of my dear son . . . cou’d move me to be I fear so undecently importunate in this business.”87 Anne Kugler draws a contrast between Lady Sarah and her more powerful contemporaries, like Lady Rachel Russell, arguing that these more powerful women did not need to rely on such language.88 But an awareness of women’s tenuous place in the political realm was not confined to women comparatively lacking in social power. Lady Russell herself, asking in 1691 for a government post for a relation, insisted, “I am not versed in the court ways.”89 When Anne Pye asked her cousin Robert Harley to help protect her family’s interest regarding a vacant parliamentary seat, she said she was initially hesitant to write since “these affairs belonged not to Women to appear in.”90 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, never shy about giving political advice to her husband, nevertheless announced in her political journal, The Nonsense of Common-Sense, “I am shock’d when I see [women’s] Influence prevail, in Opposition to Reason, Justice, and the common Welfare of the Nation.”91 In response to the idea that they should “not pretend to meddle in public affairs,”92 some women used their loyalty to their husbands to explain – or 85

Bucholz, Augustan Court, p. 172. Andrew, “Noblesse Oblige,” especially pp. 287–9. 87 Quoted in Kugler, “Prescription,” p. 176. 88 Kugler, “Prescription,” pp. 177–8. 89 Quoted in Schwoerer, Lady Rachel Russell, p. 196. 90 Anne Pye to Robert Harley, Derby, 11 May 1698, BL Add. MS 70019, fol. 33r–33v. 91 Mary Wortley Montagu, Nonsense of Common-Sense 2 (26 December 1737), quoted in Robert Halsband, The Life of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), p. 166. 92 Elizabeth Coke to Thomas Coke, 11 September 1710, HMC Cowper III, pp. 97–8. Elizabeth was quoting another woman, Lady Harpur. Despite her comment, Lady Harpur had indeed “meddled” on several occasions, according to Elizabeth, who hoped Lady Harpur would help Thomas’s parliamentary bid. 86

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explain away – their intervention in such matters. Women’s putative weakness and lack of masculine honor could enable them to seek assistance when their husbands would incur dishonor by doing so.93 In 1729, for instance, Juliana Wentworth wrote to her brother-in-law, Lord Strafford, with the news that she had found a man willing to pay £100 to be made a footman to the King. She hoped that Strafford would help her to get the man the place and that he would not tell her husband, who would spend the money rather than paying off their debts. She requested secrecy, “tho’ what I am doing I think wholly for his Service.”94 In 1701 the Countess of Sunderland wrote to the Countess of Marlborough asking for assistance in getting the arrears paid that were owed by the King to her husband. She made it clear that she was making a request that her husband would not make: “I can not say I have order from my lord to aske this favor for he is a very ill beggar.”95 Seeking help in getting her husband ecclesiastical preferment, Lady Catherine Wheler assured her sister that “I should be restrained did the immediate person for whom I apply know it. But,” she added, “my opinion is that the voluntary choice he has made of devoting himself to the ministry doth not require his spending the fortune or provisions of his younger children for the support of it.”96 Feminine ideals could also be engaged in other strategic ways. When one Mrs. Duncombe solicited Charlotte Clayton’s help in forwarding a request to the King, she asked Charlotte to pass on a letter to Mr. Pelham. Mrs. Clayton should read it aloud to Pelham to make sure he understood it; “and if he finds any fault, you may assure him it will pass as being wrote by a woman; and make him promise to read it all to the King.”97 In 1761 the Countess of Suffolk wrote to the Duke of Newcastle requesting his assistance, though “I am sensible of the impropriety of a Woman interesting herself in Elections, & solliciting Votes to make a Master of the Charter-house.” But, she went on, “may I hope that your Grace will look on my request as made in the name of Mr Berkeley [her deceased second husband], & that unless it was to serve one who married his niece, I shoud by no means think myself authorized in such a Suit?”98 Responding to a rebuke from her brother over 93 Andrew, “Noblesse Oblige,” p. 290; Linda A. Pollock, “Living on the Stage of the World: The Concept of Privacy Among the Elite of Early Modern England,” in Rethinking Social History: English Society 1570–1920 and Its Interpretation, ed. A. Wilson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), p. 90. 94 Juliana Wentworth to Lord Strafford, [6 December 1729], BL Add. MS 22227, fol. 103r–103v. 95 Countess of Sunderland to Countess of Marlborough, 11 June [1701], BL Add. MS 61442, fol. 176r–176v. 96 Lady Catherine Wheler to Lady Betty Hastings, Otterden Place, 1 March 1737[/8], in Hastings Wheler, ed., Hastings Wheler Letters, p. 143. 97 Mrs. Duncombe to Mrs. Clayton, Chiswick, 8 October [n.y.], in Thomson, ed., Sundon Memoirs, 1: 127–8. 98 Countess of Suffolk to Duke of Newcastle, [October 1761], BL Add. MS 22628, fol. 65r.

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her zealous pursuit of patronage, Lady Anne Sophia Egerton insisted that she was simply following the dictates of her nature. “Could I tell, or your [sic] hear, the inducement I have had to engage you in this affair you would not deem me blamable, or judge I had exceeded those bounds, I agree with you in thinking that Women ought to set, Even to their Understandings,” she insisted. “We act with more Spirit perhaps than the men, only from being more thoughtless, or from the pleasure of being intrusted by, or servicable to, some or other of your sex whom we Esteem & respect.”99 Not every woman willingly accepted the limits imposed on her, however, and the political arena is one in which we see women frequently expressing their frustration with gender norms. The imperious Duchess of Marlborough remarked bitterly, when discussing politics, “I am sensible . . . that what I am going to write may seem impertinent, because my simple sex are not allowed to be judges in such matters.”100 Mary Pendarves noted in 1739 that although all the talk was of war, even among the “ladies and toupées,” she hoped for peace and feared the “lives hazarded for our ill conduct and ambition, – but this is being a mere stupid woman!”101 Asking Robert Byng to assist her in dealing with lawyers, Sarah Osborn was annoyed that she had to do so. “When they see a man appear for one they will not delay so, but a poor woman, is made nothing of, she may live upon air seven year if she can,” she complained.102 Even she, however, was not averse to using gender norms strategically. “I hope it may lye one day in my son’s power to be able to serve you or yours and acknowledge the favour you do his mother, for our good Book says there is great merit in assisting the fatherless and Widow,” she reminded Byng.103 Strategies like these provided one way for women to ease the acceptance of their requests. At the same time, however, this rhetoric acknowledged that they understood their solicitations to fall into the category of public activities. No exclusion on the basis of sex could ever be complete.

99 Lady Anne Sophia Egerton to Count Bentinck, 27 June [1759], BL Eg. MS 1719, fol. 58r. 100 Duchess of Marlborough to Dr. Sandby, Tunbridge Wells, 26 August 1733, in Wyndham, Chronicles, 1: 33–4. 101 Mary Pendarves to Lady Catherine Throckmorton, Brook Street, 28 November 1739, in Lady Llanover, ed., The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany: With Interesting Reminiscences of King George The Third and Queen Charlotte, 1st ser., 3 vols. (London: Richard Bentley, 1861–2), 2: 66. 102 Sarah Osborn to Robert Byng, 4 August 1722, in Emily F. D. Osborn, ed., Political and Social Letters of a Lady of the Eighteenth Century, 1721–1771 (New York: Dodd Mead & Company, 1891), p. 25. 103 Sarah Osborn to Robert Byng, Danbury, 30 November 1722, in Osborn, ed., Political and Social Letters, pp. 27–8.

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Conclusion The widespread insistence that women had no place in society outside the household, and that all public affairs were entirely closed to them, obscures the small but significant role that women of quality could play in the explicitly public arena, distinct from their unofficial roles in consumption, sociability, and household affairs. Like men, they participated fully in the huge network of influence that characterized political life during the first half of the eighteenth century. Because public affairs continued to be conducted largely on a face-to-face basis, appointments, places, and favor were still very much granted through the personal connections of family, friendship, and political alliances. This personal aspect, which was most fundamentally embodied in the concept of influence, allowed aristocratic women an entry into public activities. Women were sought after for the influence they held themselves, through court appointments, economic power, or ties to political figures. Equally, they sought the influence of others on behalf of themselves and their families and friends. Although the apologetic language used by some women in this study suggests that they were aware of the tensions between their actions and the domestic feminine ideal, the overlapping networks of friendship and kinship tying the Quality together meant that competing for influence was a fundamental aspect of elite society. Such public activity was less constant in most women’s lives than the day-to-day exercise of traditionally feminine behavior whose public implications were only tacitly accepted. But we cannot understand the full importance of aristocratic women in their society without acknowledging this open participation in the political realm.

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Conclusion Conduct writers and other early eighteenth-century social critics looked around them and were horrified by what they saw. Their society was collapsing under the weight of decadence and luxurious display, marriage and family were no longer respected, money instead of virtue dominated their contemporaries’ lives. And at the heart of all these problems were women, who suddenly seemed to be leaving their houses in droves to enjoy themselves in the fashionable diversions that catered to them. Those who stayed at home were perhaps even worse, lost in the false worlds of lascivious novels written expressly for women’s entertainment. In response, these commentators sought to shore up the boundaries of the gender divide. They provided women with detailed explanations of their proper social roles, and they mocked or excoriated women who chose to ignore those roles. Simultaneously, didactic writers reminded women of the satisfactions to be found at home with loving husbands – true pleasures, they argued, unlike the delusional pleasures of fashionable life. All this, of course, sounds familiar. Complaints about rampant consumerism and the breakdown of traditional gender roles are as widespread today as they were in the eighteenth century. If today we talk about “family values” rather than “a prudent modest retired life,” much of the debate centers on similar issues.1 Scholars have recognized for decades that ideas about gender, and about women in particular, inform the ways in which people conceptualize their ideal societies and articulate the perceived failings of their cultures.2 Similarly, recent scholarly interest in the history of gender roles, speculation and the stock market, fashion and consumerism, is doubtless related to the heightened presence of these topics in our social consciousness at the turn of the millennium. Yet simply to stop here and note that the more things change the more they stay the same would be to ignore the historical specificity of these debates. The conduct book of the eighteenth century may have similarities to modern advice columns or self-help books, but these genres are not identical. Conduct books for women appeared to many people to answer a particular

1 Joseph Addison, Spectator (17 March 1711) in Donald F. Bond, ed., The Spectator, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 1: 68–9. The phrase is from the passage that opened the introduction to this book. 2 See in particular Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).

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social need in the eighteenth century; other genres are popular today and meet different social expectations. The first chapters of this book argued that conduct manuals emerged out of an older tradition, modified to meet new needs. Rather than being aimed primarily at men or at specific social ranks, the eighteenth-century conduct manual for women presented a single, uniform standard ostensibly applicable to all. In response to the declining attractiveness of biblical or social justifications for gender norms, conduct writers articulated a new discourse of feminine nature, drawing on the rhetoric and modes of thinking of science and the Enlightenment. The specific areas of concern addressed by early eighteenth-century didactic writers, and the solutions they advocated, were also the products of their historical moment. They focused their attention on the new products and pastimes of their society – from tea to novels, from operas to pleasure gardens. Their critique of women who resisted life in the country and pined for the metropolis emerged from the growing importance of London in British society, epitomized by the new London Season. When social pressures and political debates appeared to threaten marriage, didactic writers moved to reinforce that institution. They did so, not by emphasizing its social utility, but by presenting it as the cornerstone of emotional fulfillment for women, their natural destiny. The didactic authors’ use of such new “scientific” concepts of nature and objectivity suggests connections between issues of gender and contemporary intellectual trends. Studying conduct literature reveals how these new concepts were disseminated to an audience outside the intellectual elite. As what was ostensibly natural and discoverable through observation came to hold a high value in eighteenth-century science and aesthetics, the growing artistic and rhetorical convention of praising “nature” over “art” was reflected in the didactic authors’ praise of “natural” feminine behavior. They translated these concepts into minute rules of behavioral practice, thereby revealing links between gender, science, and the aesthetics of sentimentality.3 By analyzing the relationship between feminine ideals and women’s experiences, this book also seeks to contribute to our understanding of the ways in which intellectual and literary discourses could affect daily life. Women’s responses to feminine norms presented in the conduct books were, of course, complex. For the majority – those who were poor and illiterate – these ideas may have seemed largely irrelevant, if such women were aware of them at all. Yet even poor women were affected by the attempts of social critics to put the new ideas into practice, and by the changing attitudes of the women and men who employed them, gave them charity, and publicly or privately disciplined them. The founding of the Magdalen Hospital for penitent prostitutes in 1758 emerged out of a new vision of women that

3

See Ann Bermingham, Landscape and Ideology (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986). 219

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de-emphasized their sexual drives and was increasingly willing to regard them as innocent victims. Early sermons preached at the hospital urged the dangers posed to the “weaker” sex by male seducers, and blamed prostitution on the economic desperation of seduced and abandoned women.4 Scholars studying motherhood have also demonstrated the relationship between changes in ideology and practice, tracing in particular the growing emphasis on the importance of maternal breastfeeding and the decline of wet-nursing over the course of the eighteenth century.5 Perhaps most familiar are the occupational changes faced by working women, as an emphasis on masculine rationality and scientific methods led to men gradually intruding upon traditionally female occupations such as midwifery and dairying.6 For the women of this study, who were both the greatest participants in the fashionable world and the greatest targets of moralizing attacks, the impact was equally real. Despite the attempts of scholars to portray the new ideals of femininity as created by and for an emergent middle class, aristocratic women were far from immune to their effects. Membership in the Quality ostensibly implied moral as well as social and economic status; had it not been so, conduct writers would have been less eager to deploy the term satirically against women who they felt were failing to uphold proper standards. Yet for those who considered themselves women of quality, success in life involved a constant and difficult balancing act between what they saw as the demands of their station and the ideals they were presented with every time they turned the pages of a periodical. Not surprisingly, many of them lived lives filled with contradiction. They criticized the dominance of French modes while eagerly seeking out the latest Continental imports; they insisted on their sincerity in the most fashionably hyperbolic language of the day; they masked political objectives in the guise of friendly visits or wifely love. I have argued throughout this book that by employing the discourse of femininity, women could find a surprising amount of room to maneuver, and 4

Vivien Jones, Women in the Eighteenth Century: Constructions of Femininity (London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 86–8; Randolph Trumbach, Sex and the Gender Revolution, Volume One: Heterosexuality and the Third Gender in Enlightenment London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 185–8; Tony Henderson, Disorderly Women in EighteenthCentury London: Prostitution and Control in the Metropolis, 1730–1830 (London: Longman, 1999), pp. 184–6. 5 Robert B. Shoemaker, Gender in English Society, 1650–1850: The Emergence of Separate Spheres? (London: Longman, 1998), p. 127; Toni Bowers, The Politics of Motherhood: British Writing and Culture, 1680–1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Londa Schiebinger, Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), ch. 2; Ruth Perry, “Colonizing the Breast: Sexuality and Maternity in EighteenthCentury England,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 2 (1991): 204–34. 6 Shoemaker, Gender in English Society, pp. 201–3; Adrian Wilson, The Making of ManMidwifery: Childbirth in England, 1660–1760 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995); Deborah Valenze, “The Art of Women and the Business of Men: Women’s Work and the Dairy Industry, c. 1740–1840,” Past and Present 130 (1991): 142–69. 220

CONCLUSION

play a significant role in the means by which the Quality asserted its political, social, and economic power. The emergence of a wide range of new venues in which to socialize, and the enormous influence of London on British society as a whole, meant that during the early eighteenth century elite women were visible on a national stage to an extent greater than ever before. Although aristocratic women had always played an important role in political and social life, it was only in this period that we can begin to speak of a truly national culture. Furthermore, as we have seen, the participation of women in the many new forms of leisure and consumption fostered the anxious social commentaries and conduct manuals that paradoxically created a rhetoric useful to the female participants in this new culture. Recognizing the public implications of their behavior without openly acknowledging those implications enabled women of quality to play a role through their sociable activities and family connections that was not available in the same way to men. Drawing on the rhetoric of conduct manuals, moreover, enabled these women to claim a particular kind of virtue (and to criticize the lack of such virtue in others) – a moral standing that had been lacking in a seventeenthcentury culture which still saw women primarily as weak, sinful, and inherently vicious. To what extent did such opportunities persist beyond the middle of the century? Although detailed discussion of this question is beyond the scope of this book, it is worth considering briefly. It might seem that the increasing pervasiveness of a feminine ideology that emphasized female subordination and domesticity would lead to an ever-narrowing range of opportunities for even elite women to push the boundaries of behavior. Yet Linda Colley and Amanda Vickery have both recently suggested that the late eighteenth century was a moment of unusual opportunity for women to participate in public life. Citing the impact of the consumer society I have discussed here, as well as the opportunities created by war, they argue that women were being seen in public to an extent greater than ever before. And Colley discusses the ways in which women employed the rhetoric of virtuous wife- and motherhood to justify political acts.7 Furthermore, evidence is mounting to demonstrate the continued importance of women in the informal, “social politics” of dining and visiting at the end of the century, as well as such spectacular (and less successful) ventures as those of the Duchess of Devonshire in the 1784 election.8 These scholars argue for a prominence of 7 Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), ch. 6; Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). 8 Elaine Chalus, “Elite Women, Social Politics, and the Political World of Late Eighteenth-Century England,” Historical Journal 43 (2000): 669–97; Elaine Chalus, “Women, Electoral Privilege and Practice in the Eighteenth Century,” in Women in British Politics, 1760–1860: The Power of the Petticoat, ed. K. Gleadle and S. Richardson (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), pp. 19–38; Elaine Chalus, “‘My Minerva at my Elbow’: The

221

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women in public life that declined, they imply, sometime in the Victorian era, under the crushing weight of separate spheres ideology, the rise of the middle class, and the development of a professional politics to which the traditional claims of the aristocracy were increasingly irrelevant. Such work might present the eighteenth century as a “golden age” for women – at least for elite women. Yet recent, compelling critiques of any search for a golden age should warn us against the dangers of trusting too much in a narrative of improvement or decline.9 K. D. Reynolds has traced the continuing influence of aristocratic women in just the sort of public, political activities from which they were supposedly excluded during the nineteenth century.10 Like her, other scholars have also argued for the continuing importance of the aristocracy until the end of the nineteenth century; in fact, Richard Price argues for seeing the entire period from the late seventeenth to the late nineteenth century as a single unit.11 In place of an account of eighteenth-century opportunity for elite women followed by nineteenth-century curtailment (or perhaps specifically a decline of informal aristocratic life along with a rise of middle-class women’s political mobilization like the suffrage movement), we might be tempted to describe instead a long period of stasis. Aristocratic women were important to public life in the early eighteenth century, and they continued to be important. To leave it there, however, would also do a disservice to our understanding of the history of elite women. Real changes did take place. If the significance Political Roles of Women in Eighteenth-Century England,” in Hanoverian Britain and Empire: Essays in Memory of Philip Lawson, ed. S. Taylor, R. Connors and C. Jones (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1998), pp. 210–28; Elaine Chalus, “‘That Epidemical Madness’: Women and Electoral Politics in the Late Eighteenth Century,” in Gender in Eighteenth-Century England: Roles, Representations and Responsibilities, ed. H. Barker and E. Chalus (New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 1997), pp. 151–78; Amanda Foreman, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (London: HarperCollins, 1998); Amanda Foreman, “A Politician’s Politician: Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and the Whig Party,” in Barker and Chalus, eds., Gender in Eighteenth-Century England, pp. 179–204; Sarah Richardson, “‘Well-Neighboured Houses’: The Political Networks of Elite Women, 1780–1860,” in Gleadle and Richardson, eds., Women in British Politics, pp. 56–73. 9 Amanda Vickery, “Golden Age to Separate Spheres? A Review of the Categories and Chronology of English Women’s History,” Historical Journal 36 (1993): 383–414. 10 K. D. Reynolds, Aristocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). 11 Jessica Gerard, Country House Life: Family and Servants, 1815–1914 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994); David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); Richard Price, “Historiography, Narrative, and the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of British Studies 35 (1996): 220–56. Cannadine does argue that the period from the 1780s to the 1820s saw significant changes for the aristocracy, but presents this as the period in which “a truly British titled and territorial class” was created, with unprecedented economic, political, and social power: David Cannadine, “The Making of the British Upper Classes,” in his Aspects of Aristocracy: Grandeur and Decline in Modern Britain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 9–36. 222

CONCLUSION

of informal, notionally private behavior remained for a long time, it was being undermined. Even in the late eighteenth century, elite women faced pressures that were stronger than they had been during the period of this study. The increasing importance of maternity in defining femininity, and in particular the stress on the need for mothers to remain at home to breastfeed their children, had a real impact on the lives of even aristocratic women by the turn of the century.12 Furthermore, despite Reynolds’s important evidence for the continued role of such women in Victorian politics, the years following those covered in this book did see significant changes in British society. The increasing political prominence of the middle class, the widening of the franchise, and the growing sophistication of extra-parliamentary political movements inevitably meant that the nineteenth-century landed elite was in a more tenuous position than it had been previously. As Reynolds herself admits, “Any increase in the electorate, whether from women’s votes or from working-class votes, diminished the political importance of the aristocracy, and muted the voice of the aristocratic woman.”13 When Joseph Addison and the Countess of Strafford referred to the “Quality” in the documents with which this book began, they both acknowledged the contested nature of the term and asserted their rights to define it. Both recognized the central importance of social rank to its meaning, yet both used the term ironically to highlight the failings of those who sought to claim the status without also holding the moral high ground. Both, moreover, specifically targeted women for these attacks, drawing on the associations between female consumption, sociability, and sexuality in a critique of a particularly feminine, as well as elite, decadence. Yet neither was questioning the fundamental structure of a society still largely based on hierarchies of birth as well as wealth. While this might seem obvious in the case of Lady Strafford, who was clearly invested in such a society, it is worth emphasizing the values she shared with the Spectator, so often seen as the vanguard of the bourgeoisie. What they each sought to do, and what other women like Lady Strafford sought to do every day, was to define the concept of “quality” in their own way. Combining the newer values of a natural feminine ideal with older traditions of aristocratic superiority, early eighteenth-century women found a discourse that helped them to make sense of their world.

12

Roy Porter, “English Society in the Eighteenth Century Revisited,” in British Politics and Society from Walpole to Pitt, 1742–1789, ed. J. Black (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), pp. 47–9; Judith Schneid Lewis, In the Family Way: Childbearing in the British Aristocracy, 1760–1860 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986), pp. 209–12 (though she cautions that breastfeeding was far from universal even in the first decades of the nineteenth century); Randolph Trumbach, The Rise of the Egalitarian Family: Aristocratic Kinship and Domestic Relations in Eighteenth-Century England (New York: Academic Press, 1978), ch. 5. 13 Reynolds, Aristocratic Women, pp. 220–1. 223

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245

Index actresses, 31, 55 see also theater Addison, Joseph, 1–2, 12, 13, 68, 154, 223 see also Spectator; Steele, Richard adultery, see Howard, Henrietta; Luxborough, Henrietta (St. John) Knight, Countess of; marriage Advice to a Daughter, see Lady’s New Year’s Gift aging, 159–60 alcohol, 60, 62 Allestree, Richard, 23, 25, 27, 28–30, 38, 39, 49 see also conduct books; feminine ideals; Ladies Calling; Whole Duty of Man; Whole Duty of a Woman Amelia, Princess, 187 Andrew, Donna, 115, 196, 214 Anne, Queen, 152, 185, 190, 202, 204, 207–8, 214 Argyll, Jane Campbell, Duchess of, 75 aristocracy, definition of, 12–13 Armstrong, Nancy, 5 Arundell, Lady Barbara, 149 Arundell, Francis, 207 Arundell, Isabella (Wentworth), 2–3, 151, 152, 185, 207–8 assemblies, 10, 12, 56, 57, 170, 177, 183–4 see also fashion; leisure; sociability Astell, Mary, 21, 191 Augusta, Princess of Wales, 186–7 Bank of England, 9, 212–13 Barrells, 104, 155–8 see also Luxborough, Henrietta (St. John) Knight, Lady Bateman, Anne, 153–4 Bath, 167–8, 170, 177, 181 Bathurst, Lady Frances, 190 Beattie, John, 202 Beckett, J. V., 12, 137 Bentinck, Elizabeth, see Egerton, Lady Elizabeth (Bentinck)

Bentinck, Henrietta, see Clanbrassill, Henrietta (Bentinck) Hamilton, Countess of Bentinck, Jane, see Portland, Jane (Temple) Bentinck, Countess of Bentinck, Sophia, see Kent, Sophia (Bentinck) de Grey, Duchess of Bentinck, William, Count, 209 birth, see childbirth Black, Jeremy, 70 Bland, James, 35, 45, 47 Blount, Martha, 155, 191 Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, Lord, 14 books, see reading Boscawen, Edward, 84–5, 184 Boscawen, Frances, 154, 170, 177 and household management, 103–4, 105–6, 108–9, 114, 125, 128 patterns of consumption, 105–6 relationship with husband, 81, 83, 84–5, 108–9, 125, 180, 184 Boscawen, Jael, 113, 190, 211 Bourdieu, Pierre, 134 bourgeoisie, see middle class Bourne, J. M., 195 Bradshaigh, Lady Dorothy, 21 Bradshaw, Margaret, 187, 191–2, 200 Brathwait, Richard, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 38, 49, 51 see also conduct books; English Gentlewoman; feminine ideals Bucholz, R. O., 202, 214 Buckingham, Katharine Sedley, Duchess of, 155 Byng, Robert, 216 Careless Husband, The, 43, 146 see also theater Caroline, Queen, 88, 90, 92, 139, 179, 203, 205, 206, 207 Carter, Philip, 162, 164 Cell, Anne, 130 Centlivre, Susannah, 19 Chalus, Elaine, 196–7 Chamberlen, Hugh, 84 246

INDEX charity, 115, 137–8, 199–201 see also influence; servants chastity, see feminine ideals Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of, 163 Chetwynd, Lady Mary, 206 childbirth, 84 Childs, Fenela, 28, 30 christening, 138, 151 Churchill, Sarah, see Marlborough, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Cibber, Colley, 43, 146 see also theater Civil List, 203 Clanbrassill, Henrietta (Bentinck) Hamilton, Countess of, 117 Clarissa, 20, 21 see also Richardson, Samuel Clarke, Lady Catherine, 141, 149 Clarke, Elizabeth, 175–6 class, 11–13, 28, 46–7, 98–9, 106, 127–31, 219–20, 222–3 see also middle class; servants Clavering, Mary, see Cowper, Mary (Clavering), Countess Clayton, Charlotte, Lady Sundon, 155, 171, 200–1, 205, 207, 215 Clifford, Lady Anne, 124 Coke, Edward, Lord, 75 Coke, Elizabeth, 107, 210 Coke, Lady Jane, 74, 102, 108, 143, 153, 160 Coke, Lady Mary, 75 Collection of the Moral and Instructive Sentiments . . ., 20 see also Richardson, Samuel Colley, Linda, 221 conduct books, 14–15, 19–20, 22, 49 audience, 21, 23, 24, 67, 69–70, 219 characteristics of, 22–3, 66–7 for men, 27 French, 26–7 origins of, 23, 26, 218–19 popularity, 23, 24, 28 see also feminine ideals; reading see also individual titles and authors Congreve, William, 180 Coningsby, Margaret, Countess of, 116, 119, 143 Conolly, Lady Anne (Wentworth), 144, 154, 174, 199 Conscious Lovers, The, 33 see also Steele, Richard

consumerism, 10, 55–6, 133; chs. 2 and 5 passim consumer revolution, 10, 218, 221 and politics, 152–3 and reputation, 151–2, 156–8 see also fashion; feminine ideals; furnishings; leisure contract theory, 7 correspondence purpose of, 76, 90, 182 see also politeness country, idealization of, 126–8, 129, 155–9, 190 court, 139, 140, 147–8, 154, 158–9 appointments, 187–8, 202, 203–4, 205, 206, 207–8 conflicts in royal family, 203–4 Germans at, 148, 188 importance of, 202 and politics, 139 and social status, 203 see also influence; patronage; politics Coventry, Anne, Countess of, 70 Cowper, Mary (Clavering), Countess, 119–20, 160, 204, 207 as courtier, 139, 146, 147–8, 179, 188, 205 marriage, 77, 82 Cowper, Lady Sarah, 70, 119, 121, 122, 143–4, 176, 196, 214 Cowper, Sir William, 122 Cowper, William, Earl, 77, 82, 123 credit, 9, 106, 207–8 see also domestic management Curtin, Michael, 163–5 dairying, 129, 220 see also work dancing, 58, 169–70, 173–4 see also fashion; leisure de Grey, Sophia, see Kent, Sophia (Bentinck) de Grey, Duchess of death, 85–6 see also mourning; wills Delany, Mary (Granville), 102, 105, 148, 170, 181, 216 on education of niece, 167–8 household management, 99, 103, 113, 122 and servants, 113, 116, 120, 122 views on fashion, 145, 146, 147, 153, 159–60, 177, 191 views on marriage, 82, 101, 149 Delany, Patrick, 116, 149 247

INDEX Devonshire, Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of, 196, 221 Dewes, Ann (Granville), 75, 81, 180–1 Dewes, Mary, 167 didactic literature, see conduct books; feminine ideals; novels; reading divorce, see marriage domestic management domestic authority, 122–3 domestic economy, 98, 106–11 domesticity, 16, 105–6, 126–8, 129 household expenditures, 99–100, 106 and marital conflict, 121–3, 129–31 and reputation, 109–10 see also estates; furnishings; housing; servants; work Dormer, Anne, 122 double standard, 27, 94–5 dress, see fashion du Bosc, Jacques, 24, 25, 26, 27 see also conduct books; feminine ideals; Honnête Femme Dupplin, Abigail (Harley) Hay, Viscountess, 138, 147, 152, 191 Dupplin, George Hay, Viscount, 152–3 Dyves, Dorothy, 145, 187 East India Company, 9 education in accomplishments, 169–70, 173–4 ideas about female, 18, 45–6 in sociability, 3, 58 women’s responsibility for, 167–74 see also feminine ideals Egerton, Lady Anne Sophia (de Grey), 199, 201–2, 215–16 Egerton, Charles, 209 Egerton, Lady Elizabeth (Bentinck), 107 English Gentlewoman, The, 23 see also Brathwait, Richard Enlightenment, 8, 219 Entertainer, The, 52 Essay on Modern Gallantry, An, 59 Essex, John, 33, 39, 40, 43, 46, 47, 50, 51, 57, 62 estates building and renovation, 102–5, 156–8 management of, 123–8 see also domestic management; housing; servants; work Eyles, John, 213

Fable of the Bees, The, 32, 68 Familiar Letters Upon Important Occasions, 20, 67 see also conduct books; feminine ideals; Richardson, Samuel fashion, 49, 141, 146, 220 and aging, 159–60 in dress, 51–3, 140–1, 143–5, 150 foreign, 24, 50, 53, 140, 143, 144, 158–9, 220 in landscaping, 155–8 and politics, 54, 147–9 rejection of, 144–5, 153–60 and reputation, 151 and sincerity, 154–5 and social status, 146–8 see also consumerism; feminine ideals; leisure; politeness; sociability Female Spectator, The, 20, 63 see also Haywood, Eliza; periodicals feminine ideals and aging, 159 and alcohol, 62 and assemblies, 57 and chastity, 15, 22, 27, 28, 29, 30–5, 49, 50, 61–2 and consumerism, ch. 2 passim, 67–9, 142, 152 and dancing, 58 and domesticity, 1, 46–7, 58, 60, 62–3, 70 and dress, 24–5, 50–5 and fashion, ch. 2 passim, 15, 28, 36, 38, 41–2, 67, 140, 142, 143 and female education, 45–6, 58 and female nature, 15, 29–33, 38–9, 41–2, 44–5, 50, 51, 53, 58, 60, 61–2, 66, 68, 70–1, 83–4, 189 and female power, 42, 46–7, 58, 70 and female subordination, 27–8, 30, 40–4, 58, 60, 68–9, 82, 94 and fiction, 63–7 and gaming, 60–2 and household authority, 46–7, 58, 61, 70, 98, 124, 131 and love, 38–41 and marriage, 15, 27–8, 35–44, 58–9, 68–9, 72, 77, 78, 80, 82, 83–4, 86, 87, 93, 95–6 and masquerades, 56–7, 58 and modesty, 15, 22, 23, 30–5, 49 and national identity, 28, 50, 53, 55, 61, 143 and operas, 57, 59 248

INDEX Gore, Lady Mary, 2–3, 12 Granville, Ann, see Dewes, Ann (Granville) Granville, Mary, see Delany, Mary (Granville)

and oratorios, 57 and politics, 54–5 and religion, 28, 29, 30–1 and reputation, 175, 178 resistance to, 21, 67 and ridottos, 57, 59 and sexuality, 28, 29, 32–4, 43, 56–7, 59–60, 64–6 and social status, 24–5, 26, 46–7, 50, 51, 58, 68, 70 and taste, 69 and tea, 60–2 and theater, 57–8, 59–60 and women at court, 25–6 and women in public, 25–6, 57–60 see also conduct books; novels; periodicals; reading see also under individual titles and authors Fielding, Henry, 21 financial revolution, 9 see also credit; investments Finch, Anne, see Nottingham, Anne (Hatton) Finch, Countess of Finch, Daniel, see Nottingham, Daniel Finch, Earl of Foreman, Amanda, 196 Fox, Charlotte, 177 Frederick, Prince of Wales, 75, 186–7 Free-Thinker, The, 33 furnishings, 99–101, 103–6, 137 and reputation, 149–50 and social status, 100–1, 106, 149–50 see also consumerism; domestic management; estates gaming, 60–2, 146, 153 see also fashion; leisure Gay, John, 192 George I, King, 87–8, 179, 187, 188, 202, 205 George II, King, 14, 60, 88, 94, 95, 179–80, 187, 203, 205–7 George III, King, 14 Germaine, Lady Betty, 189 Giffard, Martha, Lady, 114 gift exchange, 108, 117–18 and family, 138 meaning of, 136–9, 149 and reputation, 138–9, 149 see also consumerism Glorious Revolution, 6, 7–8, 11, 14, 194 Godolphin, Lady Henrietta, see Newcastle, Henrietta (Godolphin) Pelham Holles, Duchess of

Habermas, Jürgen, 6 Halifax, George Savile, Marquess of, 23, 24, 25, 27–8, 43, 214 see also conduct books; feminine ideals; Lady’s New Year’s Gift Hall, Anne, 130 Hamilton, Henrietta, see Clanbrassill, Henrietta (Bentinck), Countess of Hanover, 87 Hardships of English Laws in Relation to Wives, The, 21 Harley, Abigail, 103, 120, 124–5, 135, 152–3, 194, 200 Harley, Lord Edward, see Oxford, Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Harley, Sir Edward, 200 Harley, Elizabeth (Foley), 84 Harley, Henrietta, see Oxford, Henrietta (Cavendish Holles) Harley, 2nd Countess of Harley, Robert, see Oxford, Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Harley, Sarah, see Oxford, Sarah (Middleton) Harley, 1st Countess of Harley family, 137–8 Hastings, Lady Betty, 113, 115, 117, 149, 199 Hastings, Lady Frances, 171 Hatton, Alice Elizabeth, 172, 173–4, 177 Hatton, Anne, see Nottingham, Anne (Hatton) Finch, Countess of Hatton, Christopher, Viscount, 169, 200 Hatton, Lady Elizabeth, 199, 209 Hatton family, 172–4 Hay, Abigail, see Dupplin, Abigail (Harley) Hay, Viscountess Haywood, Eliza, 20, 60 Hertford, Frances (Thynne) Seymour, Countess of, 14, 110–11, 141, 176, 180, 183, 191, 199, 209 estate improvements, 104–5 relationship with servants, 115–16, 118, 119, 121 views on fashion, 127–8, 135, 145, 158–9 Hervey, Lady Mary, 103, 154, 170 Hickes, George, 203 Hill, John, 43–4, 57, 69

249

INDEX Hobart, Henrietta, see Howard, Henrietta (Hobart) Hogarth, William, 19, 21, 36 Marriage à la Mode, 36 L’Honnête Femme, 24 see also du Bosc, Jacques hoop skirts, 51–2 see also fashion housing, acquisition of, 101–2, 105 see also domestic management; estates; furnishings Howard, Lady Annabella, 126, 151 Howard, Charles, Earl of Suffolk, 14, 87–95, 129–31 Howard, Henrietta (Hobart), Countess of Suffolk, 14, 155, 187, 191–2, 215 accuses husband of abuse, 88–9, 93–4, 130–1 breakdown of marriage, 87–96, 129–31 as courtier, 88, 90, 92, 189, 192, 200, 205–7 as mistress of George II, 88, 94–5, 179–80, 205–7 reputation of, 93–5, 179–80, 205–6 separation settlement, 95 ideals of femininity, see feminine ideals influence and bribery, 206 and charity, 199–200, 214, 215 and clerical appointments, 198–9, 215 and court places, 201–8, 214–15 definition of, 198 and elections, 209–13 and femininity, 204, 213–17 and government places, 194, 209, 214 limits on, 204–6 and politics, 196–8, 200–1, 205, 206, 209–13 and power, 204, 206, 208, 212–13 as public, 197, 200–1 see also patronage; politics Ingrassia, Catherine, 64 investments, 212–13 see also financial revolution Ireland, 73, 142, 144, 148, 176–7 Irwin, Anne, Viscountess, 74–5, 146–7, 152, 153, 154, 186–7, 195, 203–4, 209 Jenkins, Philip, 133 Johnson, Anne, see Strafford, Anne (Johnson) Wentworth, Countess of

jointures, 9, 35 see also marriage; separate property Jones, Lady Catherine, 150 Joseph Andrews, 21 Kent, Sophia (Bentinck) de Grey, Duchess of, 100, 102, 117, 126 Kildare, Emily Fitzgerald, Countess of, see Leinster, Emily (Lennox) Fitzgerald, Duchess of Kingston, Duke of, 111, 150 Kinnoul, Abigail Hay, Countess of, see Dupplin, Abigail (Harley) Hay, Viscountess Kinnoul, George Hay, Earl of, see Dupplin, George Hay, Viscount Klein, Lawrence, 162–4 Knight, Henrietta, see Luxborough, Henrietta (St. John) Knight, Lady Knight, Robert, Jr., see Luxborough, Robert Knight, Lord Knight, Robert, Sr., 152, 155 n.99 Kugler, Anne, 196, 214 Ladies Calling, The, 23, 24, 28–30, 38, 65 see also Allestree, Richard Ladies Complete Letter-Writer, The, 46 Ladies Library, The, 20 see also Steele, Richard Lady’s New Year’s Gift, The, 23, 24, 27, 43 see also Halifax, George Savile, Marquess of Langford, Paul, 162, 163 Leasowes, the, 155 see also Shenstone, William Leinster, Emily (Lennox) Fitzgerald, Duchess of, 100, 108, 111 leisure, 10–12, 49, 55–6 see also assemblies; consumerism; fashion; London; ridottos; theater Lincoln, Countess of, 209–10 Locke, John, 7 London, 62, 107, 154, 155, 167 and national culture, 10–11, 58, 109, 138, 140–1, 156, 172, 182–3, 202, 219, 221 love, see marriage Luxborough, Henrietta (St. John) Knight, Lady, 14, 192, 199, 210 accused of adultery, 104, 155 estate management, 104, 124, 126, 155–8 and fashionable society, 126, 127, 141, 155–8, 180–2, 191 250

INDEX reputation of, 180–1 separation from husband, 104, 110, 155 views on domestic economy, 109–10 Luxborough, Robert Knight, Lord, 110, 155 Lyttelton, Lady Elizabeth, 103, 131 Lyttelton, Sir George, 103 Mandeville, Bernard, 32, 68 manners, see politeness Marble Hill, 95 see also Howard, Henrietta (Hobart), Countess of Suffolk Marlborough, Henrietta (Churchill) Godolphin, 2nd Duchess of, 180 Marlborough, Sarah (Jenyns) Churchill, Duchess of, 113, 154, 186, 188, 192, 207 political interests and activities, 2–3, 148, 190, 204, 211, 216 relationship with family, 75, 177, 179, 211–12 use of influence, 200, 211–13, 215 wealth and spending, 101, 126, 213 marriage breakdown, 86–95, 129–31 as contract, 88–9, 92–3, 94 and law, 87, 93, 95 and love, 37, 39–41, 76–83 motives for, 36–8, 73–6 and obedience, 40–4, 80, 82–6, 88–9, 90–2, 94 and public reputation, 93–5, 96 settlements, 9, 36–7, 73, 207 see also feminine ideals; jointures; separate property; widowhood Marriott, Thomas, 42, 44, 46, 47, 53 Masham, Abigail, 185, 204, 207–8 masquerades, 10, 56–7, 58, 160 see also consumerism; fashion; feminine ideals; leisure McKeon, Michael, 32 medicine, see science middle class, 5, 11, 12, 69–70, 81, 98, 220, 223 see also class Midwife, The, 33, 61 modesty, see feminine ideals Molesworth, John, 81 Molesworth, Polly, 81 Montagu, Elizabeth (Robinson), 74, 76, 80, 81, 83, 123, 171, 175 Montagu, Mary (Churchill), Duchess of, 2–3, 143, 179, 186

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, see Wortley Montagu, Lady Mary (Pierrepont) motherhood, 84–6, 220, 221, 223 breastfeeding, 220, 223 see also childbirth; education mourning, 145 Namier, Lewis, 195, 198 nature, see feminine ideals; science Newcastle, Henrietta (Godolphin) Pelham Holles, Duchess of, 75, 86 Newcastle, Thomas Pelham Holles, Duke of, 210 Nonsense of Common-Sense, The, 214 North, Elizabeth, Lady, 110, 150, 151–2 Nottingham, Anne (Hatton) Finch, Countess of, 85, 111, 172, 173, 200, 209 Nottingham, Daniel Finch, Earl of, 111, 209 novels, 63–7 see also conduct books; feminine ideals; reading; Richardson, Samuel Okin, Susan Moller, 38 old age, see aging operas, 10, 55, 57–8, 174, 212 see also consumerism; leisure; theater oratorios, 10, 57 see also consumerism; leisure; theater Orkney, Elizabeth Hamilton, Countess of, 190 Osborn, Sarah, 150, 216 Oxford, Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of, 194–5 Oxford, Henrietta (Cavendish Holles) Harley, 2nd Countess of, 147 Oxford, Robert Harley, 1st Earl of, 2–3, 84, 185–6, 194, 208, 214 Oxford, Sarah (Middleton) Harley, 1st Countess of, 185–6, 198 Pamela, 20, 21, 33, 67 see also Richardson, Samuel patronage, 205, 211 and charity, 196 definition of, 198 and politics, 195, 196–7 and power, 195–6 Peck, Linda Levy, 195 Pendarves, Mary, see Delany, Mary (Granville) 251

INDEX periodicals, 18–19, 31, 39, 66 see also conduct books; feminine ideals; reading see also under individual titles Pierrepont, Lady Mary, see Wortley Montagu, Lady Mary pin money, see separate property Pitt, Ann, 187, 210–11 Pitt, Harriet, 206 Pitt, William, 211 pleasure gardens, 10, 56, 57–8, 156 see also consumerism; fashion; leisure Pocock, J. G. A., 9 politeness at court, 186–9, 190, 192 definition of, 163–6, 177 and education, 3, 164, 165, 167–74, 188 and fashion, 190–3 and morality, 180–1 polite letter, 165, 171, 172–4, 181, 191 polite society, 163 and politics, 185–9, 190, 191 and reputation, 180–2, 184 and sensibility, 189 and sincerity, 164, 189–93 and social status, 163–4, 171, 175–6, 179–80, 181–2, 191 see also dancing; education; sociability politics, 222–3 consumerism and, 152–3 and fashion, 54, 147–9 and feminine ideals, 54, 147–9 and politeness, 185–9, 190, 191 and sociability, 166, 185–9, 221–2 wifely advice about, 86, 194–5 see also court; influence; patronage Pomfret, Henrietta Louisa Fermor, Countess of, 190 Pope, Alexander, 19, 32, 154, 157 pornography, 21, 34, 59–60 Portland, Jane (Temple) Bentinck, Countess of, 102, 107–8, 117, 139, 169, 195, 200, 201, 213 Portland, Margaret (Cavendish Harley) Bentinck, Duchess of, 81 Portland, William Bentinck, Duke of, 81 Price, Richard, 222 Prompter, The, 40 prostitution, 35, 39, 219–20 Pye, Anne, 194, 208–9, 214 Quality, definition of, 12–14, 15, 17, 223 Queensberry, Catherine Douglas, Duchess of, 141

Raby, Thomas Wentworth, Baron, see Strafford, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Ramsden, Lady Elizabeth, 113, 145–6 Ramsden, Isabella, 188 Ranelagh, see pleasure gardens Rawdon, Elizabeth, Lady, 73, 142, 176–7 reading women as readers, 18–21, 31, 63–7, 77 see also conduct books; feminine ideals; novels; periodicals reformation of manners, 18–19 and women, 19–21, 44 Reynolds, K. D., 222, 223 Richardson, Samuel, 20, 21, 52, 67, 176 riding habits, 52–3 see also fashion ridottos, 56, 57, 154, 160, 174 see also consumerism; fashion; leisure Robinson, Elizabeth, see Montagu, Elizabeth Rowe, Elizabeth, 127–8 Roxburgh, Mary (Finch) Ker, Duchess of, 183 Royal Africa Company, 9 Russell, Diana (Spencer), Duchess of Bedford, 113, 183 Russell, Lady Rachel, 214 St. John, Henrietta, see Luxborough, Henrietta (St. John) Knight, Lady St. John, Henry, see Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, Lord Salisbury, Anne Cecil, Countess of, 113 satire, 20–1 Savile, George, see Halifax, George Savile, Marquess of science, 8–9, 30–1, 219 Scientific Revolution, 8 sensibility, 189 separate property, 9, 36–7, 41–2, 82, 110–11 see also feminine ideals; marriage separate spheres, 4–7, 10, 196, 221–2 separation, see marriage sermons, 18 servants, 98, 108, 110, 111–23, 124, 125, 145, 151, 171 disciplining, 121–3 gifts to, 117–18 hiring and firing, 112–15, 119 and marital conflict, 121–3 and morality, 115–16, 118–19 252

INDEX number of, 109, 111 problems with, 119–23 relationships with mistresses, 111–12, 114–21 sexual behavior, 120–1 and social status, 112, 141–2 Seymour, Frances (Thynne), see Hertford, Frances (Thynne) Seymour, Countess of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of, 12 Shamela, 21 Shenstone, William, 104, 109, 155–6, 181, 191, 199, 210 Shevelow, Kathryn, 5 sincerity, 189–93 see also politeness Sir Charles Grandison, 116, 176 see also Richardson, Samuel smallpox, 85 Smart, Christopher, 33 sociability definition of, 165–6 and education, 3, 167–74 female networks of, 171–2, 185–6 and gender roles, 162, 164–5, 168, 171, 182–3 and morality, 175, 177–81 and politics, 166, 185–9, 221–2 public and private, 166, 167–8, 170, 178, 182, 183–4, 185–6, 193 and reputation, 175, 177–84 and sexuality, 179–81 and social status, 178, 183–4 visiting, 165, 178, 182–3 see also assemblies; feminine ideals; London; politeness Somerset, Frances Seymour, Duchess of, see Hertford, Frances (Thynne) Seymour, Countess of South Sea Company, 9, 60, 152, 213 Spectator, The, 1, 4, 6, 18, 19, 21, 31, 41, 44, 45, 49, 55, 62, 63, 66, 68, 78, 79, 83, 148, 223 see also Addison, Joseph; Steele, Richard Spelman, Lady Elizabeth, 117 Stanhope, Lady Catherine, 179 Staves, Susan, 212 Steele, Richard, 19, 20, 33, 53, 135 see also Spectator Stone, Lawrence, 36, 38 Strafford, Anne (Johnson) Wentworth, Countess of, 16, 141–2, 177, 178, 194–5, 198, 223

household management, 100, 101–2, 126 as mother, 84, 168–71, 174 patterns of consumption, 82–3, 100, 128–9, 145, 147, 151, 152 patterns of sociability, 2–4, 12, 78, 152, 168–9, 170–1, 172, 180, 183–4, 185–6 political activities, 2–4, 152, 185–6, 187, 207 rejection of fashion, 78–80, 151 relationship with husband, 2–4, 78–80, 82–3, 118 and servants, 109, 112, 113–14, 117, 118, 120, 126, 145 Strafford, Thomas Wentworth, 3rd Earl of, 2–3, 15, 77, 78, 82–3, 84, 107, 116, 136, 138, 185–6, 215 Strafford, William Wentworth, 4th Earl of, 174 Suffolk, Charles Howard, Earl of, see Howard, Charles Suffolk, Henrietta Howard, Countess of, see Howard, Henrietta (Hobart) Sunderland, Anne (Churchill) Spencer, Countess of, 85–6 Sunderland, Anne (Digby) Spencer, Countess of, 215 Sundon, Charlotte Clayton, Lady, see Clayton, Charlotte Swift, Jonathan, 45, 189 Talbot, Catherine, 116, 126–7, 128, 144, 176, 191, 210 Talbot, Lady Cecil, 200–1 taste, 69 tea, 60, 62–3, 135 see also consumerism; fashion theater, 10, 55–6, 174 actresses, 31 plays, 19, 55, 146 see also consumerism; fashion; leisure; operas Throckmorton, Lady Catherine, 81 Townshend, Mary, 192 Trembley, Abraham, 117 Twickenham, 78, 95, 100 see also Strafford, Anne Wentworth, Countess of; Wentworth, Lady Isabella Vane, Anne, 179 Vauxhall, see pleasure gardens Veblen, Thorstein, 134, 142, 161 253

INDEX Vickery, Amanda, 135–6, 221 Virgin’s Nosegay, The, 50, 62 visiting, see sociability von den Steinen, Karl, 196 voting, 223 in company elections, 212–13 see also influence; patronage; politics Walpole, Horace, 19, 192, 206 Walpole, Robert, 150, 152–3, 203, 204 Weekly Oracle, The, 32–3, 65, 66 Weil, Rachel, 7–8 Wentworth, Anne (Johnson), see Strafford, Anne (Johnson) Wentworth, Countess of Wentworth, Lady Anne, see Conolly, Lady Anne (Wentworth) Wentworth, Elizabeth “Betty”, 2–3, 128–9, 147, 171–2 Wentworth, Lady Henrietta, 169, 171, 174 Wentworth, Lady Isabella, 15, 128, 171–2 anxiety about social status, 107, 118, 159 and court, 203, 207–8 relationship with son, 84, 105, 116, 118, 138 and servants, 113–14, 116, 120, 121 views on consumption and fashion, 108, 112, 128, 138, 149–50, 151, 159, 183 Wentworth, Juliana, 215 Wentworth, Lady Lucy, 169, 174 Wentworth, Thomas, see Strafford, Thomas Wentworth, 3rd Earl of Wentworth, William, see Strafford, William Wentworth, 4th Earl of

Wheler, Lady Catherine, 82, 114–15, 215 Whole Duty of a Woman, The, 20, 23 see also Allestree, Richard Whole Duty of Man, The, 20, 29, 65 see also Allestree, Richard widowhood, 102, 123–4, 159 see also jointures; marriage Wilkes, Wetenhall, 34, 42, 51, 66 Willoughby, Lady Cassandra, 97, 103, 124, 128 wills, 117–18, 119, 137, 139 work, 99, 220 manual labor, 128–31 and social status, 128–31 see also domestic management; estates; servants Wortley, Anne, 76, 144 Wortley Montagu, Edward, 72, 77, 80, 105, 135, 144, 192 Wortley Montagu, Lady Mary (Pierrepont), 33, 96 consumption and spending, 99, 102, 111, 120, 165 elopement, 72, 80 political interests and activities, 86, 148, 210, 214 rejection of fashion, 80, 144–5 relationship with husband, 77, 80, 83, 86, 102, 135, 192–3 and sociability, 170, 173, 177–8 views on love and marriage, 72, 75, 76–7, 80, 120 Young, Edward, 20

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